New Orleans has long sought to remedy juvenile delinquency through punishments designed to show children that bad actions have consequences. But if the city helped to alleviate the trauma that can cause children to misbehave, it could make greater strides in its battle to reduce crime.

Here’s how the Orleans School Board plans to help traumatized students Work is underway within the Orleans Parish School Board to improve the behavioral health supports for public school students citywide.

That's the gist of a lengthy report just released by a panel commissioned by the City Council to study the effects of childhood trauma and recommend ways to address it.

The panel's 21 members had nearly a year to do their work, which was prompted in part by a series published by this newspaper on children impacted by violence in Central City.

The work was also influenced by a recent report by the Institute of Women and Ethnic Studies that found that one in five children in New Orleans' Central City had witnessed a murder and one in three had witnessed domestic violence, among other troublesome trends.

Episodes such as those trigger violent or anti-social responses in children's brains after the smallest provocation — reactions often misattributed to conditions like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the study says. Instead, those children should be diagnosed and treated for the post-traumatic stress they are in fact battling, according to the report.

The report's authors recommend a number of ways the city might help to resolve the problem. They include providing more affordable housing, reducing poverty, and creating more places where kids can have fun and get involved in wholesome activities.

All of the ideas are designed to ensure that children are labeled "sad, not bad" by their caregivers, said psychiatrist Denese Shervington, the task force's co-chairwoman.

"Please make a moral decision to invest in the healing of our children and our communities," she said. "In so doing, you are defending the future of New Orleans."

Of course, even an action plan means little without the cash to see it through. To that end, Shervington and her colleagues recommended that City Hall create a "children's budget" that would pay for dedicated staffers to implement the strategy.

City, school and health officials should meet with philanthropic organizations to identify funding sources that might underwrite that budget without taking money away from other city priorities, the report says.

The panel suggested it would take about $575,000 annually to staff the Children and Youth Planning Board, for example.

The lengthy report lays out the problem in stark terms. Often, it says, children who display problematic behavior are struggling with physical or sexual abuse, neglect, poverty and a number of other trying situations.

Punitive reactions, such as suspensions and expulsions from school or even incarceration, have done little in the past to stop misbehavior from recurring and in fact may exacerbate that behavior, the report says.

It says school and city leaders should instead help to soothe the toxic stress children may be carrying by requiring all health facilities to screen children for trauma. They should also provide more music and art resources in public schools and create on-campus "healing centers."

In addition, the city could invest more in affordable housing and entertainment destinations for children, schools might require them to perform physical activity when they misbehave, and judges might consider diversion instead of jail time more often.

The city has already taken some steps in line with the report's findings. NOLA Public Schools announced this year that the public schools would screen children for behavioral health problems, and several schools have already reshaped their policies to better serve students who show signs of trauma.

But more changes need to happen on a broader scale, experts and City Council members said Thursday.

And the recommendations in the report must be funded if any real change is to happen, Councilman Jason Williams said.

"This is one of the first times that government is seeing New Orleans' children as its responsibility," Williams said. "We will be working through the budgetary process to see if we can scale this endeavor up."

The council received the mayor's proposed 2020 budget on Thursday. It must approve it, probably with changes, by Dec. 1.