Robert L Perry Juvenile Justice Center Building Continuum of Care to Support Youth Success Initiative

The Robert L. Perry Juvenile Justice Center Building Continuums of Care to Support Youth Success Initiative seeks to integrate juvenile justice system stakeholders, including youth and their families, into an assessment and planning process that will not only map intervention services and programs, but will create efficient and inclusive processes for accessing those services and programs, and generating a comprehensive system of support for youth and their families. This initiative seeks to reduce overincarceration and racial disproportionality in the juvenile justice system by strengthening community-based systems of support for youth. The purpose of the initiative is to eliminate system redundancies and misaligned services, enabling strategic reinvestment of cost savings into additional diversion, prevention, and intervention programs to support youth success. Working together, the aim is to create an equitable continuum of care capable of meeting youth needs compassionately and within their own communities.

Primary activities for the planning process include (1) Engage in an intensive intervention mapping process to identify strengths and gaps in preventive services and programs available to youth and their families throughout the system. This mapping process will focus on opportunities to enhance and increase community-based offerings. The evidence-based Sequential Intercept Model will provide a framework for identifying points along a youth’s path to incarceration where positive intervention could divert them to better outcomes. (2) Identify redundancies and opportunities to streamline services and programs, improving access and utility while also determining cost savings and opportunities for reinvestment. (3) Develop an implementation plan aligned with national best practices that supports the decarceration of youth and the build-out of enhanced services for youth identified as being at risk of involvement in the justice system, or who are reintegrating, through a coordinated, collaborative strategy that also promotes safe communities.

Expected outcomes are a plan with (a) intervention asset map and gap analysis, (b) a continuum of care plan with roll-out timeline, and (c) an implementation and sustainability plan. The service area is Boone County, MO, and intended beneficiaries are youth and their families as well as providers seeking to improve how they serve their constituents.