Advocacy for Youth involved with the foster care system and/or justice system whose parents are incarcerated and for Pregnant and Parenting Youth who are Justice Involved. | Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

Award Information

Awardee

CASA FOR CHILDREN OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Award #

15PJDP-23-GG-00755-FAMI

Funding Category

Competitive Discretionary

Location

WASHINGTON, DC

Congressional District

Status

Open

Funding First Awarded

2023

Total funding (to date)

$764,509

Original Solicitation

OJJDP FY 2023 Family-Based Alternative Justice Program

Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2023, $764,509)

The CASA DC Family-Based Alternative Justice Program aims to adapt its existing programming to better serve justice-involved families, increase community collaboration, and enhance support for children affected by parental incarceration and divert teen parents from further involvement in the juvenile justice system. CASA staff and volunteers will be empowered to advocate for these populations of youth through the development of a robust training program tailored to meet the needs of these populations.

We will focus our advocacy work on two groups of youth: 1) youth involved in the foster care system and/or justice system whose parents are incarcerated, and 2) pregnant and/or parenting youth who are justice involved. Additionally, as our CASA volunteers and CASA staff are critical to the delivery of advocacy services to the youth, we also will be providing intensive training to our advocates and staff on how to successfully work with youth with incarcerated parents to increase connection with their families and address their needs while living in foster care and/or involved in the justice system. The training also will provide CASA staff and volunteers with a toolkit to use when working and advocating for pregnant and parenting youth to divert them from reoffending, promoting positive well-being and family preservation so these young parents stabilize and do not become further justice-involved.

Advocacy Services - Our CASA volunteers who have been trained using the National CASA Curriculum will receive supplemental training through the training series developed under this grant. They will work directly with the youth to identify, advocate for services to address their needs and encourage youth to connect with family members who are incarcerated. The CASA volunteers will work toward family preservation and positive well-being for the youth while they are involved in the foster care system and/or juvenile justice system. Under this grant 35-45 youth with incarcerated parents and 12-15 pregnant and parenting youth involved in the juvenile justice system will be served annually.

b.Training Series Development

We will contract with expert organizations to design and facilitate a comprehensive training series for CASA volunteers and staff, based on a literature review conducted by our training and technical assistance partner, the Family-Based Justice Center at New York University Marron Institute. The literature review provides a strong evidence base to ensure the training program is effective and grounded in the latest research. The training series will expand the knowledge and capacity of the organization to continue after the grant period. Topics may include protective factors and diversion strategies, letter writing and other methods of maintaining meaningful contact with an incarcerated parent, trauma-informed practices for working with and raising youth with incarcerated parents, understanding the potential impacts of parental incarceration on youth, using de-stigmatizing language, and promoting positive childhood experiences to mitigate adverse childhood experiences. Additionally, training will be provided to advocate for youths’ needs across several domains including education, job readiness, housing, health, access to social capital and resources to support young parents.. This will provide CASA staff and volunteers with the tools to successfully advocate for youths' needs in court while parents are incarcerated and for the needs of young pregnant and parenting youth..

The following staff changes are proposed:

1. Additional Case Manager

Hire one additional full-time CASA case supervisor to provide more personalized and effective support for youth whose parents are incarcerated. Adding an additional case manager will bolster CASA DC’s ability to manage cases effectively, providing more tailored support to youth and families. This should enhance the success rate by ensuring that each case receives adequate attention and support. Additionally, personalized case management can serve as protective factors for youth in a number of ways, therefore supporting diversion efforts of both foster and juvenile justice-involved youth. A positive adult figure can serve as a protective factor for youth by providing consistent emotional support and guidance, helping them navigate challenges and build resilience. This relationship can also support diversion efforts by offering mentorship and positive role modeling, which steers youth away from risky behaviors and towards constructive activities. CASAs advocate and provide recommendations to court for services and support for other protective factors, including community engagement, academic success, stable housing, access to mental health services, participation in extracurricular activities, health coping skills, and personal resilience and self-esteem and access to social capital and resources for young parents.. By addressing these various aspects of a youth's life, CASAs help create a comprehensive support system that promotes long-term positive outcomes and reduces the likelihood of offending or reoffending.

2. Removal of Clinical Services

The removal of clinical services is intended to streamline the project focus to allow CASA DC to concentrate on its core strengths—advocacy and mentorship— leading to more impactful and sustainable outcomes in these areas. By removing clinical services, CASA DC will focus more narrowly on advocacy and mentorship. This change aligns with CASA DC’s mission and historical strengths and aims to enhance its core services, ensuring that advocacy is central to the project.

3. Removal of Freedom Child as a sub-recipient and partner in this project.

We believe that with the shift that we are proposing in this new scope of work that we will be contracting out training and curriculum experts to train our CASA staff and volunteers to work specifically with youth whose parents are incarcerated. Freedom Child does not have a track record of evidence-informed practices to the best of our knowledge in this area.

4. Expanded Collaborations

We intend to invite additional partners as a DC workgroup/advisory committee to include former youth who experienced parental incarceration and/or are were teen parents involved in the justice system, court staff, child welfare agency workers, as well as other partners in the space working towards family reunification/preservation and other experts in the field identified in the literature review. Through development of this work group, we will brainstorm ideas for improving relationships between youth living in out-of-home placements and their parents that are incarcerated. This will enhance the quality of training and support provided, strengthen partnerships, and contribute to a more integrated and effective approach to supporting families. Additionally, our trainings will not only be opened up to our CASA volunteers and staff but also will be opened up to child welfare social workers, court staff and other CASA programs.

5. Evaluation

We intend to hire an external evaluator (preferably local in the DMV area) which we will identify through drawing on local universities that have specialized departments in child development or public health. This evaluator will assist us with enhancing our performance measurements and conducting the evaluation which may include measuring: 1) the effectiveness of our training program through measuring areas increased knowledge attainment with training participants (CASA volunteers, staff and partner participants); 2) capturing the impact the training has on our advocacy efforts in achieving court ordered services to address the youth’s and families’ needs; and 3) strategies and efforts by our CASA volunteers to strengthen relationships between the youth and family members and taking a deeper dive into the impact of subgroups of youth e.g. by age group, gender.

6. Updated Performance Measures

While in our original proposal, there were some performance measures identified, we would like to update our performance measurement through the expertise of the external evaluator. We do recognize at this point, however, that some of the performance measures will no longer be relevant as identified below.

Table 1. Summarizing Proposed Updates

Item

Description of changes

Eligible Youth

We will serve youth with incarcerated parents and we will serve pregnant or parenting youth involved in the juvenile justice system

Goal of program

The goal is similar to the original goal but with an emphasis on working with youth with incarcerated parents and teen parents. The goal is now to increase CASA DC’s capacity to implement successful diversion programming for parents/primary caregivers in the juvenile justice system and reducing the likelihood of future involvement in the criminal justice system as well as working to increase connections and support youth with incarcerated parents.

Number of youth served

35-45 youth in the foster care system and/or juvenile justice system with incarcerated parents and 12-15 pregnant and/or parenting youth involved in the juvenile justice system annually.

Number of CASA volunteers received supplemental training

A minimum of 50 CASA volunteers will be trained annually through the supplemental training provided under this grant.

Collaborations

The ability to work with community organizations as contractors to provide robust evidence-informed trainings to support staff and volunteers.

Funding

Budget GAM will be submitted to reflect personnel changes

Program Structure

Remove camps and instead focus on staff and volunteer training.

Performance Measures

Update performance measures to better capture the impact of the proposed changes. Specific changes included on the following table.

Budget Adjustment

Adjust personnel starting October 1, 2024 to reflect staff directly involved in the work, specifically, remove clinical staff and include case managers.

Table 2. Proposed Performance Measure Updates - we will work with the external evaluator to determine performance measurements that are appropriate to measure knowledge attaining of volunteers and staff going through the training and to measure the impact of the work that CASA volunteers have on the youth they serve who have gone through the training.