Community Chaplaincy Program

U.S. Community Chaplaincy (USCC) is a nonprofit nonsectarian organization whose mission is to help traumatized persons. USCC works with local law enforcement agencies to organize, train, and manage teams of civilian volunteers to provide immediate on-scene support to citizens who have been traumatized by a homicide, suicide, traffic collision, child death, or other tragedy. Through the Community Chaplaincy Program, USCC has modified and expanded an existing curriculum to include guidance on responding to incidents of mass violence. Topics covered in the training curriculum include—

• An overview of the grief process.
• Confidentiality.
• Appropriate responses to victims and survivors.
• Death notification.
• Working with children and adolescents.
• Working with the elderly and disabled.
• Working with diverse cultures.
• Responding to large-scale incidents.
• Secondary trauma.
• Self-care for responders.

The revised curriculum is currently being pilot tested on volunteer chaplains in other sites, and USCC is working with those sites to establish community chaplaincy programs. For more information, visit the U.S. Community Chaplaincy Web site.

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