Families First Learning Lab FY2023 Family-Based Alternative Justice Program

Families First Learning Lab (FFLL) will implement new and enhance existing alternative justice
programs for parents facing incarceration and youth exposed to parental incarceration. FFLL will
initiate project efforts by creating an ad hoc Family Circle Committee to discuss program
planning and implementation relevant to this grant, to include parental and youth voices. The
goal will be to give parents the support, education, and skills necessary to improve whole-family
outcomes such as parenting classes, parent-child interaction opportunities, teen support to work
with the whole family, and accessible virtual education platforms to reach rural communities
throughout Montana. The anticipated outcomes of these programs include increasing family
preservation, improving parental attachment, increasing healthy child development, preventing
children from entering the foster care system or entering back into the foster system, improving
parenting skills, reducing the likelihood of future involvement in the criminal justice system, and
reducing the financial impact on the criminal justice and/or child welfare systems.