Building Local Continuums of Care to Support Youth Success

Through this project, Douglas County will form a Juvenile Justice Strategic Planning Council (JJSPC) – comprised of stakeholders from public, private, governmental, and lived experience backgrounds – to explore new reform efforts targeting system-involved youth under the jurisdiction of Nebraska State Probation or the child welfare system. The JJSPC will follow the principles of collective impact and the community systems solutions framework to identify available resources and existing gaps in prevention and intervention services for at-risk youth and youth involved in the juvenile justice system or returning to the community following an out-of-home placement. It will also review the costs associated with these services and each juvenile justice system stage to create economic impact strategies that will support the decarceration of youth and allow for reinvestments of funds from reactionary back-end system process to more proactive, front-end preventative efforts. This group will meet monthly over the 18-month grant period and create a report outlining the assets gaps, resources, and cost-savings to be reinvested.