Safer Stronger Together
Safer Stronger Together is a partnership among Maryland's Department of Human Services (DHS), Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS), and Department of Juvenile Services (DJS). The initiative focuses on the approximately 2,000 families who interact with more than one public system and often face the greatest challenges.
These families are often concentrated in communities with high levels of poverty and violent crime. Too often, government systems work separately, which makes it harder for families to get the help they need.
Safer Stronger Together brings Maryland's agencies and communities together to better coordinate support and improve safety.
Safe Stronger Together
A cross-agency, place-based initiative to invest in young people, strengthen families, empower communities, and improve public safety.
The Safer Stronger Together initiative believes that community safety is about more than the absence of crime. It is also about the presence of opportunities for community members and shared trust and true partnership between government and community. Research shows that there is a relationship between strong community ties, improved trust in government, and reduced crime.
Safer Stronger Together is DHS, DPSCS, and DJS’s effort to invest in young people, strengthen families, empower communities, and improve public safety by:
- Improving collaboration among multi-agency staff serving the same families.
- Supporting community-led solutions that improve safety and well-being.
- Concentrating services, supports, and opportunities to neighborhoods most affected by crime and government system involvement.
Safer Stronger Together has two components:
- Agency staff working together with a Family Navigator to serve shared families, and
- Local community action boards devising ways to use public funds to address public safety issues in their neighborhoods
Over the next few years, Safer Stronger Together will work with 10 communities throughout the state to bring staff together in true partnership with community members heavily impacted by government involvement and crime in their neighborhoods to help them become safer and stronger together.