Caregiver support program urges Boston council to fund 'We Are Better Together' as violence-prevention resource

At the public testimony session on March 24, more than a dozen caregivers, program staff and participants described the We Are Better Together caregiver program and urged the Boston City Council Ways and Means Committee to fund it as a violence-prevention and public-health intervention.

"When you fund this program, you are funding healing, prevention, and transformation," said Seraphina, a program participant who described the group as "the first place that didn't turn away from my story." Several speakers said the program helps families navigate trauma and reentry and asked the council to amend the operating budget under violence-prevention if the mayor's recommended budget does not include the program.

Stephanie Williams Crosby, a minister and program participant, said the caregivers' work produced measurable life changes, including increased stability and access to clinical supports. "This program is a lifeline," she said. Multiple witnesses linked the program's goals to public-safety and public-health outcomes and recommended the council use violence-prevention allocations to secure sustained funding.

Speakers asked councilors to view caregiver support as an upstream investment in community safety and to protect the program's operations from year-to-year budget instability. Councilors heard personal accounts of grief, incarceration, reentry and the health impacts of long-term caregiving, which witnesses said are not otherwise adequately addressed by existing services.

No formal council action was taken at the listening session; the committee heard and recorded written testimony in support of the program and said it would consider those submissions in budget deliberations.