Program Targeting Violence and Abuse in Saturated Area of Cook County, Illinois

Meggie Chapman and Associates is working with Laynie Foundation to help raise funds to launch their comprehensive educational intervention program called On-Task© which aims to advance the cessation of family violence; their initial test of the program has been successful. Laynie Foundation, Incorporated (LFI), a non-profit 501 (c) 3 public charity, is dedicated to providing clinical mental health and behavioral services for children, adolescents, adults and seniors throughout greater Chicago and the Southland region of Cook County, Illinois. On-Task© was designed specifically to address the significant need for family violence abuse prevention and intervention treatment. Although a national epidemic, the program initially targets a violence and abuse saturated area of Cook County, with the potential to be replicated for national significance, specifically focusing on juvenile offenders in Chicago’s Southland. Because juvenile domestic violence offenders tend to be recidivists or have a previous delinquency record or themselves suffer from the intergenerational cycle of violence, LFI created a court-based pilot intervention program for juvenile offenders age 14-17, in which they partner with the Markham Municipal Sixth Court District of Cook County, the district court serving the target area. The District experiences a high level of domestic violence cases; from January through June 2012, 2,009 adult victims and 98 children were served by just one local family shelter as a result of family violence. LFI’s On-Task© program is built on the foundation, “expression without aggression”, teaching character and coping skills to yield positive sustainable behaviors and aims to break the cycle of violence and support the cessation of domestic violence.