Thomas Breen photo
Some of the members of Bereavement Care Network with new advisory council member Shirley Ellis-West (in white).
A local nonprofit that supports families of homicide victims celebrated its fifth anniversary by inducting the manager of a juvenile offender diversion program onto its advisory board and by recognizing a local funeral director for his empathy and collaboration.
The nonprofit, Bereavement Care Network Inc., held its annual meet and greet and award ceremony Friday evening outside of the mayor’s office on the second floor of City Hall. Around 60 people showed up to watch and participate in the hour-long ceremony.
Nakia Dawson-Douglas.
Founded by Nakia Dawson-Douglas in June 2013, Bereavement Care offers financial and emotional support to New Haveners who have lost a family member or friend to homicide.
Dawson-Douglas, a clinical secretary for palliative care service at the Smilow Cancer Center and a former bereavement coordinator with the local anti-violence group Ice the Beef, founded the group soon after her best friend was killed in 2011.
She said that her friend’s family was fortunate to be able to cover most of the cost of the funeral with life insurance. She knew that too many people in New Haven who lost loved ones to violence did not have the financial means to pay for a funeral. She recognized just how important it was to her friend’s mother that Dawson-Douglas showed up not only for the funeral and the burial, but for the months and years following her friend’s death.
The crowd at City Hall.
In June 2013 she founded Bereavement Care with six other New Haveners who had also lost someone to homicide. The group now has 18 members, almost all African American women.
Their primary work involves reaching out to every New Haven family that loses a family member to homicide over the course of the year. If the family consents, Bereavement Care gathers donations and helps coordinate between the victim’s family and local funeral homes, flower shops, grocery stores, and cemeteries. They’ll arrange for everything from a dove release at a funeral to bouquets of donated flowers.
After the funeral and burial, Bereavement Care follows up with each victim’s family once per month for as long as the family is interested in staying in touch.
“You have so many people there when the passing takes place,” Dawson-Douglas said. But those people are not always there, or at least there as regularly, one month, two months, or two years later. That’s where Bereavement Care comes in: offering financial support at the time of loss, and then ongoing emotional support and a sense of community in the months and years after.
According to Bereavement Care member Nitchka Little, the group has worked with 42 different New Haven families throughout the nonprofit’s nearly five years of existence.
Dawson-Douglas said that she has noticed that homicides in New Haven are on the decline, with last year’s count at a decades-low number of seven, compared to 34 homicides just eight years ago.
But, Little said, the decrease in crime does not reduce the pain for those who still experience it.
“After a family loses a relative to homicide,” she said, “that pain never goes away.”
Bereavement Care Secretary Talisha Jackson later described the group’s slogan as “Stop the crying, stop the tears.” New member Beverly Richardson perhaps summed up the unique role this group plays for New Haven families who have lost loved ones to homicide when she said, “They follow the families. They don’t just visit them once.”
Ellis-West (right) and the Community Foundation’s Jackie Downing.
Friday night’s ceremony, packed with celebrations of the organization as a whole and individual members’ accomplishments, pivoted around the induction of Shirley Ellis-West as a new member of the group’s advisory council and around the formal recognition of Hamden funeral director Peter Moraski for his open collaboration with the group.
Ellis-West, a former Quinnipiac Meadows alder, is currently the manager of the New Haven Family Alliance’s Juvenile Review Board. Her group runs a criminal justice diversion program for New Haven youth, aged 8 to 17, who have been referred to her by the police, the juvenile court, and the school system. Her group works with 200 New Haven youth each year, providing six months of case management services and a promise that their records will be wiped clean if they complete the program.
“So many families find themselves with very limited resources when they lose a loved one,” Ellis-West said about what drew her to get involved with Bereavement Care. “This group provides truly personal support and love in the community that these families might not otherwise get.”
As a new member of the group’s advisory council, Ellis-West said that she hopes to introduce the concept of “communities of care” to Bereavement Care, by which the nonprofit will cultivate a network of pastors, counselors, and trauma experts to keep on call to provide psychological affirmation and support along with the financial and emotional support the group already specializes in.
Peter Moraski (right) and Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers.
Bereavement Care bestowed its Community Service Award on Peter Moraski, the 33-year-old director of Colonial Funeral Home and Hamden Memorial Funeral Home.
Moraski said that he received his first homicide victim at his Hamden funeral home around four years ago. He prepares the burials for around 10 homicide victims each year, mostly from New Haven.
He said that when a family reaches out to him about hosting a funeral for a homicide victim, he goes through all the usual funeral arrangements. He also reaches out to Dawson-Douglas and makes sure that Bereavement Care is in touch with the victim’s family. Dawson-Douglas then shepherds her group’s resources to help pay for the funeral and flowers and anything else the family might need.
“I’m complete humbled to receive this award,” Moraski said with a smile. He said that he’s in the funeral business not to make a lot of money, but to help serve the community in which he lives.
“We started our meetings in my dining room and in my living room,” Douglas-Dawson said at the end of the night. “Now we’re in City Hall. We started with 7 members. Now we’re 18. And we’re here to stay.”
Bereavement Care will host its annual march and rally in support of families of homicide victims in September. The march will start at the Charles Street police substation, and will go Downtown and conclude at Goffe Street Park. The guest speaker will be Officer Tommy Norman from Little Rock, Arkansas.
