When Jennifer D. Barahona, LCSW, executive director of the Newtown-Sandy Hook Community Foundation learned about an opportunity to partner with the Ana Grace Project on two events promoting healing and recovery through community connections, she saw a viable way for the foundation to continue exploring alternatives to Newtown’s heavy reliance on one-to-one counseling post 12/14.

To date, the underwriting of that counseling and other more individualized recovery and post traumatic therapies has been draining away funds that poured into the community in the weeks and months following the Sandy Hook tragedy, and is now continuing at a trickle with several significant grants on the verge of eclipsing.

“Even having the best therapist in the world will not help those in our community heal without the loving embrace of the people around them,” Ms Barahona told The Newtown Bee one recent morning in an interview at the foundation’s Church Hill Road office. “At this point we’re paying out $10,000 in mental health counseling bills every week, but that’s just one piece of the larger puzzle when it comes to recovery.”

She said it is important at this point for the foundation to use its limited remaining resources to cast a bigger net when it comes to addressing community-wide recovery from the after effects of 12/14.

“That’s why we’re moving toward supporting other types of programs embracing (Dr Bruce Perry’s) message, either through grants or by putting on our own events,” Ms Barahona said. “Our grant to the Ana Grace Project to do an event at WestCONN is focused on those who have been traumatized as well as the recovery professionals helping them. While the local event is more directed at how we can help move Newtown to embrace the concept.”

“The foundation has really embraced the philosophy of Dr Bruce Perry,” she said, referring to the renowned trauma recovery expert who is keynoting both a community, and regional symposium on building resilience through communal connections. Dr Perry is himself a supporter of the Ana Grace Project.

The Ana Grace Project was established in 2013 by WestCONN professor and musician Jimmy Greene and Nelba Marquez-Greene, a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, whose daughter Ana Grace was among the young victims of 12/14.

The two upcoming events were preceded by the provision of Dr Perry’s books, The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog, and Born For Love: Why Empathy is Essential and Endangered to the CH Booth Library. Ms Barahona said Dr Perry’s philosophy is now woven into the latest Requests for Proposal (RFP) application for foundation underwriting.

“We’re now looking to support programs and focus our funding on reestablishing human connections, because we’ve learned that real healing from a community perspective can’t occur in isolated situations,” Ms Barahona said. “So our next round of grants will go to programs sharing a theme of bringing people together.

Dr Perry has explained that while individual treatment may be one important component, “the most traumatic aspects of all disasters involve the shattering of human connections.”

“Growth, improved functioning, and healing cannot occur in isolation and strong, supportive social networks have proven to act as a buffer to the negative effects of trauma,” said Ms Barahona. “Therefore, the Foundation is interested in helping to support and cultivate programs and initiatives that work to build and strengthen interpersonal connections with children, youth, and adults throughout the community.”

Dual Audiences Served

Dr Perry serves as senior fellow of The ChildTrauma Academy, a not-for-profit organization based in Houston, and adjunct professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago.

Over the last 30 years, Dr Perry has been an active teacher, clinician, and researcher in children’s mental health and the neurosciences holding a variety of academic positions. He is a strong supporter of The Ana Grace Project.

The subject of Dr Perry’s free Newtown talk will be how “Deepening Connections & Relationships Transform Families and Communities.” Parents, clergy, civic groups, seniors, and community leaders are all encouraged to attend.

Dr Perry said he wants those at the Newtown breakfast, which is being conducted at the Newtown Congregational Church on December 2, as well as those attending a daylong professional symposium the following day at Western Connecticut State University, to walk away with the same message.

“Having a healthy community, having an array of highly diverse relationships is both protective when one experiences a traumatic event, and healing after that traumatic experience,” he said.

The 2015 “Love Wins Mental Health Conference,” on December 3 will also focus on building community and creating interpersonal connection to prevent violence and promote recovery. It will be held at the university’s westside campus at the brand-new Visual & Performing Arts Center.

At that event, Dr Perry will to speak about “The Neurobiological, Social/Emotional and Relational Underpinnings of Resilience.”

The conference will also feature breakout sessions on “Traumatic Bereavement In Adults,” “School Safety,” “Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS),” “Developing Healthy Boys & Men At The Intersection Of Class, Race And Gender,” After Disaster Strikes: Responding To Children, Families And Communities,” and “Beyond Talk Therapy…What Else Works In Healing?”

Cost for the daylong seminar is $150, which includes all sessions, continental breakfast, lunch and dessert reception. Registration can be done online through .anagraceproject.org

There are a limited number of scholarship slots available to the Sandy Hook community as part of a grant through The Newtown-Sandy Hook Community Foundation, Inc. To request a scholarships, e-mail .jbarahona@nshcf.org

For group registrations, e-mail alidac@klingberg.com. For additional information and registration, visit  or contact Alida Conley, at Klingberg Family Centers Traumatic Stress Institute, at 860-832-5562 or anagraceproject.org.alidac@klingberg.com

Change In Reimbursement

Ms Barahona told The Bee that the foundation is shifting disbursement of its remaining funding from primarily one-on-one support to greater community connections initiatives.

“By the end of this year alone, the foundation will have spent down more than $250,000 for individual counseling,” she said, adding that local funds established by the Lions Club and Rotary will continue to help individuals to the extent they can, “but we had to start paring back.”

At the same time, the foundation is working with other community leaders and agencies to try to ensure continuation of some of the core services including those provided by the Recovery and Resiliency Team (RRT) headquartered at Fairfield Hills.

“We do want to continue supporting a core group of nonprofits with technical assistance or access to development resources,” Ms Barahona said. “We want to do the best we can with the money that we have both in the moment and in the future.”

That means helping to shore up those core nonprofits in an already challenging fundraising environment both locally and nationally.

According to the foundation RFP, “Research also shows that relief from trauma symptoms is often experienced when individuals become part of something bigger than themselves. Getting involved in an effort that in some way gives back to the community has proven to be incredibly healing. It restores a sense of control and connects individuals to a larger mission.”

To date, besides its $20,000 grant to the Ana Grace Project for the upcoming community breakfast and WestCONN symposium, the foundation has underwritten $120,000 in additional grants including:

*$20,000 to The Avielle Foundation, established to honor another one of the young 12/14 victims, Avielle Richman. The grant supported several Avielle Foundation initiatives focusing on brain health awareness.

*$15,000 to the RRT for professional development and PTSD training specifically for both private and organizational service providers working with the most impaired.

*18,000 to the Resiliency Center of Newtown supporting a therapeutic day camp serving a total of 100 children, and two six-week Positive Discipline courses.

*$15,900 to the Wheeler Clinic to conduct a training of all teachers in the Newtown Public Schools on Youth Mental Health First Aid.

*$24,000 (two separate grants) to Tapping Solutions underwriting a public and professional trauma education series; PTSD training for professionals; to support training and supervision of licensed mental health professionals in EFT/Tapping for trauma mastery; and to sustain that program.

*$4,787 to Newtown Kindness supporting two events/programs aimed at encouraging community connections, kindness, and giving back – Newtown Pumpkin Festival, and Charlotte’s Free Lemonade.

To learn more about the Newtown-Sandy Hook Community Foundation, visit nshcf.org.