The Baltimore City Health Department Office of Youth and Trauma Services serves a significant number of youth with multiple adverse childhood experiences who are caught in a cycle of violence. Our youths are both victims and perpetrators - the services we provide enable them to build resiliency and recover from trauma exposure, as well as build self-efficacy skills for making healthy decisions.

 Through community partnerships, the Youth Services and Advocacy Project (YSAP), integrates therapeutic interventions, case management, and social supports including housing, transportation, educational assistance, and peer support in a continuum of care model for youth who are primary and secondary victims of multiple forms of violence, providing both direct and referral services.

 The interventions are designed to reduce risk factors associated with exposure to violence and facilitate a path for healing for young victims. YSAP responds to the emotional and physical needs of victims using a trauma-informed approach while reducing multiple recurrences and violence re-victimization. The project provides services to victims of the following types of violence: conventional crime, child maltreatment, victimization by peers and siblings, sexual victimization, witnessing and indirect victimization (including exposure to community violence and family violence), school violence and threats, and domestic and dating violence. Youth Services Advocacy Project (YSAP) serves an average of 120 victims of violence ages 11-24, annually.