Building Local Continuums of Care to Support Youth Success in Delaware County, PA

The Delaware County Juvenile Detention Rehabilitation Department will work with community-based partners in a targeted effort to bring youth, families, and community organizations together to support the launch of the Delaware County Assessment Center, which will focus on providing youth with continuum of care services and support in order to promote positive life developments and avoid justice system involvement as youth and into adulthood. The project will be the County's first organized effort to create such an assessment center, as none currently exists, highlighting the dire need to develop a robust and targeted diversion system assessment as well as an actionable intervention plan to mitigate gaps in community supports and services for young people, before they encounter the juvenile justice system.

The project will be supported by the hiring of a full-time continuum coordinator within the Delaware County Juvenile Detention Rehabilitation Department in order to conduct primary activities within the program scope, including but not limited to: creating an active database and reporting system to support positive outcomes for youth; developing an assessment center plan within the five communities most impacted by the juvenile justice system; designing an ongoing program evaluation approach in order to determine program efficacy and implement best practices; and championing a five-year roadmap for transforming the County juvenile justice system to promote positive impacts for all youths and the wider-community.

The overall goal of the project is to support better outcomes for youth and their families by investing more resources to address root causes of system involvement through prevention and intervention programming across a community-based continuum of care in neighborhoods most impacted by incarceration.

Project subrecipients include the National Assessment Center as a technical assistance provider and to-be-identified consultants and contractors for program coordination, program evaluation, and data dashboard development.