Could a payment of $500 change someone’s life? Researchers at Yale are preparing to publish two papers looking at the outcomes of a program offering one-time cash to victims of community violence and intimate partner violence in and around New Haven. The takeaways are similar: The programs profoundly help people meet urgent needs, strengthen their connections with community organizations and allow them to take greater charge over their futures.Back in 2023, Yale New Haven Hospital received a $75,000 grant from the nonprofit 4-CT. The grant allowed the hospital to offer people who have been shot, stabbed, severely assaulted or trafficked two payments of $500 each. That included people who have experienced intimate partner violence. (In the last year, the hospital has reduced the payment to a single installment of $500.)Dr. Lucy Paredes, a research fellow at Yale and author of the paper, told CT Mirror that she interviewed between 15 and 20 recipients of cash assistance between June 2023 and July 2024.
Paredes said she was struck by how severely an injury could affect someone’s finances — not just because of hospital bills, but also the loss of steady income from being out of work for a period of time. She said she’d spoken to people who couldn’t qualify for things like family medical leave either, because they had already used up their allotted sick time or were new at a job and hadn’t yet accrued it.
