CHOP Has Launched a Grief and Trauma Support Program for Philly Kids

From the pandemic to the gun violence epidemic to systemic racism to the opioid epidemic, life in Philly is rife with traumatic events. And that trauma is a lot for anyone to cope with, especially a member of Philly’s most vulnerable communities, who bore the brunt of the pandemic, and even more so for a child of those communities. For those reasons, CHOP recently launched a collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania’s Netter Center for Community Partnerships and the Uplift Center for Grieving Children to provide programming to support Philly kids experiencing grief and trauma. The new initiative will focus on providing resources for kids in West and Southwest Philly....

South says the original idea for the new partnership was to focus on providing in-person group therapy to CHOP primary care patients. When the pandemic hit, however, they were forced to pivot. “We started to ask, ‘How do we reach our patients?’ since families were staying home early last year,” he says. “So, we decided to virtually expand to schools in order to reach more children in Philly’s underserved areas, and leveraged the relationship we already had with Uplift to bring on the Netter Center, who was already doing amazing work in local schools.” He adds that the partners took into account the digital divide that exists in Southwest and West Philadelphia, as well as user acceptance, so as to create a “COVID-compliant program that would work in a digital platform and actually be used by community members.”

To read the full article from Philadelphia Magazine, click here.