The Cure Violence gun violence prevention program is moving forward on Peoria’s south side, without the community organization contracted by the health department.
The Peoria City/County Health Department selected the nonprofit House of Hope last fall and awarded the agency a $563,000 grant earlier this summer. Since then, the organization, in partnership with the health department, has hired a site manager and seven “violence interrupters” and “outreach workers” to do the job of gun violence prevention.
“House of Hope is a great nonprofit on the south side. They’re doing great work for the community,” said Director of Epidemiology Katy Endress from the Peoria City/County Health Department. “There were just some capacity issues in terms of implementation, you know, getting some things that you need for a large grant and a program such as Cure Violence, to really get that up and running effectively. So, some of those things they just weren’t able to deliver on.”
As such, Endress said the nonprofit was issued a 30-day notice and a corrective action plan in July with a termination date of Aug. 17 if it fell short of specific goals. Now, that day is here.
Endress said House of Hope did receive and spend some of the funding on starting implementation, but didn’t have the exact figure. The remainder will return to the health department.
House of Hope CEO Terry Burnside had not responded to a request for comment from WCBU at the time of publishing.
The health department plans to take on the task of implementing Cure Violence on the South Side. Endress said the seven staff members already hired will get an opportunity to continue in their role with the health department.
“We actually were able to work with our HR department to offer them a start date of this Tuesday [Aug. 13] so they wouldn’t have a gap or lapse in their employment,” Endress said. “So, yeah, we’ve kept in mind, you know, the well being of the team. We don’t want anyone to be without a job.”
Endress said it’s not completely unheard of for a Cure Violence program to operate without a partner community organization.
“Some cities [Cure Violence] works with across the U.S. actually do house the entire program out of their health department,” she said. “Some examples they gave us were in Durham, North Carolina and a site in Atlanta, I believe.”
This is the latest in a string of updates on the program since the Chicago-based Cure Violence Global began evaluating Peoria for a project site in Oct. 2022. Before that, the health department stepped in to pay out $25,000 for the evaluation when the city council passed on funding it twice.
In September 2023, the health department lost Peoria Community Against Violence as a partner in the East Bluff neighborhood, when thaynonprofit went under.
After years of work, the health department is committed to the program, said Endress.
“We are committed to seeing it through, we want to see this change,” she said. “We want, you know, our community to be thriving. And so we’re going, we’re going to keep pushing forward.”
Representatives of Cure Violence Global will be in Peoria next week for the last week of staff training.
Endress is expected to address the Peoria County Board of Health with additional updates and information at its meeting on Monday, Aug. 19.
