After two years of messy groundwork, any and all efforts to launch Cure Violence Global's gun violence prevention program in Peoria are dead.
How the city got here depends on who you ask.
“The biggest issue was how they, the Peoria City/County Health Department just deviated from the actual model on how the structure of that organization would look like,” said House of Hope CEO Terry Burnside, speaking recently on WCBU’s Mother’s War on Violence podcast.
The health department subcontracted with House of Hope to be the community partner in implementing Cure Violence Global’s gun violence prevention model on the south side of Peoria.
As a specific example of deviation, Burnside says Program Director Alicia Wells should have been an employee of his organization if the official Cure Violence model was followed. But she was instead hired as an employee of the health department in June.
Public Health Administrator Monica Hendrickson says otherwise, saying there's multiple ways Cure Violence programs are structured around the country.
“In communications at our weekly meetings it was determined that the program management be embedded into the health department,” said Hendrickson. “And still have site supervision, violence interrupters and outreach workers be employed by House of Hope.”
Read more: Former Cure Violence Global CEO explains the model they use to WCBU
These disagreements are a recurring theme in dialogue between the two organizations. Burnside and the associated Peoria Community Human Resource Center’s Corinne Barnes say health department personnel misunderstood the Cure Violence model and micromanaged the nonprofit.
“Trying to implement that model, it had to be changed,” said Barnes. “The piece that I do want to add, they did not have a structure because the health department and a lot of individuals are not really knowledgeable on how to implement this program.”
Burnside claims these issues led to representatives of Cure Violence Global expressing concerns about model changes to the health department. Hendrickson says no such interaction occurred during weekly meetings with Cure Violence Global leadership.
“The oversight and the accountability to that program, that’s what the health department wants to make sure is happening,” she said. “So, you know, if someone feels that’s micromanaging, for us, that’s being accountable.”
In the podcast conversation, Barnes and Burnside specifically mention Director of Epidemiology and Clinical Services Katy Endress as a source of changes and “concerning issues” in the program.
“They were supposed to provide support and connections like an in-between person of all of the different entities,” said Barnes. “But because of the lack of knowledge and education around this actual particular model, that’s where it became an issue.”
Hendrickson says Endress was instrumental in the research and vetting of programs that led to initially choosing Cure Violence.
“From that, then, when we started transitioning, because of her knowledge base and her years of studying this, as well as research on it, we worked under her office to really start the implementation process of it early on, to assist with staffing and the need to kind of ‘up staff’” said Hendrickson. “She was really hands-on, communicating directly with Cure Violence Global on a routine basis, providing updates and support to House of Hope, providing data and information.”
Barnes, who says she was never officially paid by or connected to the program, eventually developed a budget and a three week onboarding process at Burnside's request, separate from anything created by the health department or training provided by Cure Violence.
“But it wasn’t just educating them on the model, educating them on trauma informed care,” she said. “I made sure all the staff members are certified in trauma informed care. The data, how to collect and analyze the different hotspots.”
But Hendrickson says the health department was "not given any documentation" of an onboarding program.
Next began the process that led to the Health Department terminating the subcontract.
“They would like to have seen some changes, ‘they’ being the health department, so they came up with a corrective action plan,” said Burnside. “We met the action plan request. We did everything they asked us to do, made the adjustments and corrections.”
Burnside references being unable to attend a specific meeting at the Aug. 13 deadline of the corrective action plan as a reason the department ultimately pulled funding, but Hendrickson sees it differently.
“Based on their availability to deliver that in the timeline-dedicated periods led us to recognize that this would, there were still challenges that needed to happen, that needed to be worked through and that was something that we couldn’t maintain,” she said. “So we went forward with the termination of the contract.”
Burnside says he found out about the termination through the media, something Hendrickson disputes.
After ending the subcontract, the Health Department offered positions to the seven people hired for Cure Violence, four of whom took them up on the offer. Burnside sees that as evidence.
“For them to, you know, just take it from us, it was their plan, their goal to actually have the program at the house, or, excuse me, at the Peoria City/County Health Department from the jump start,” he said.
But Hendrickson says the Health Department realized from the beginning its own limitations didn't make basing the program there possible.
“I think that’s the key part of how Cure Violence operates is that, the neighborhoods where you see the most violence, you really want to have nonprofits or individuals that understand and reside and work into that area,” she said.
Now, Hendrickson calls the entire ordeal a "learning experience" for the community. She says the program may not have had a good fit with any nonprofit in the community and “building capacity” for management of large grants may have needed to happen first.
Burnside believes they had the knowledge and the skill sets to get started before the "rug was pulled" out from under them, the subcontract terminated and funding returned.
An external audit commissioned by the Health Department is ongoing. The Peoria Police Department is also investigating the House of Hope for alleged "funding discrepencies" associated with the program.
