Developing a Plan for the Continuum of Care for At-Risk Youth in the District of Columbia

The District of Columbia will work to establish a continuum of care to address the gaps in service delivery for youth involved in the juvenile justice system, youth who have dual involvement in the juvenile justice and child welfare system, and youth at-risk of involvement in the juvenile justice system. The District’s Juvenile Justice Committee (JJC) has identified establishing a continuum of care as a priority area to ensure that youth receive services and support and protective factors to mitigate the risk of juvenile justice system involvement. While the District has a number of services and programs offered to system involved youth, the District has struggled to meet youth needs while in the care of the District. Often youth have to use the same channels to access services as the general public, although they are at the highest need for services. In addition, connection to services has taken months to start and sometimes not at all prior to leaving the District's care.  There is a need for better coordination among justice system, health and human service, and education agencies to ensure that youth needs are met, needs are addressed while in the care of the District, and that youth have access to services when they are no longer in the care of a District agency. Therefore there is a great need to establish a continuum of care. In order to establish a continuum, the District must review existing resources, identify specific areas of need for gaps in services and coordination, and establish a plan for service delivery. This process requires a coordinated effort and plan among several juvenile justice, health and human service and educational agencies. Since the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC) currently has a structure established to convene various stakeholders, the CJCC will establish a subcommittee to help facilitate this process. Through the development of an implementation plan, the District plans to build on previous asset mapping and gap analysis to develop an implementation plan that can be executed across the District’s youth serving agencies. The subcommittee established by the CJCC will consist of juvenile justice, health and human service and education agencies represented on the JJC, and youth and community members.  The CJCC will identify a subcontractor for the full-time roles to carry out the work of the planning council and facilitate the development of an implementation plan following the review of current District resources, assets and gaps.