Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Announces New Collaboration with University of Pennsylvania’s Netter Center and Uplift Center for Grieving Children to Offer Innovative Grief and Trauma Programs for West & Southwest Philadelphia Students

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) today announces a collaboration to help children cope with grief and violence, as part of the Healthier Together Initiative. Working with CHOP’s Center for Violence Prevention (CVP), the Netter Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania (the Netter Center), and the community-based provider Uplift Center for Grieving Children (Uplift), the collaboration will provide resources in an after-school setting for children experiencing grief and loss and will also train adults with the necessary skills to provide trauma-informed emotional support.

“Children in West and Southwest Philadelphia experience traumatic events far too frequently” said Alonzo South, Senior Director of Community Engagement at CHOP. “We know chronic exposure to violence and other trauma can lead to learning challenges and physical and behavioral health issues. As a result, it is critical that we help these children build resilience and buffer them against the traumatic exposure to community violence, as well as grief and loss from the pandemic.”

The collaboration complements the existing partnership between CHOP and Uplift through Healthier Together’s Growing Resilience in Teens program, which receives funding support from TD Bank. In this new program, Uplift is working with two of the Netter Center’s University-Assisted Community Schools (UACS), which provide comprehensive school day and after-school programming for K-12 students in West Philadelphia. At these schools, masters-level grief clinicians from Uplift deliver programming to support students in grades K-8 who are grieving significant deaths or navigating other ambiguous losses, such as isolation from school and community during the pandemic or incarceration of a loved one. Uplift also hosts monthly family empowerment workshops centered on building resilience and understanding grief, trauma, and social-emotional health. Since launching in January 2021, Uplift has served more than 50 UACS students and caregivers through peer-support groups and workshops.

Read full press release here.