Five Good Friends : A Mentor Program for Tribal Youth on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation

The Southern Ute Indian Tribe is approximately 1,400 enrolled members with about 1,000 of the Tribe's members living on 1,025 acres in SW Colorado. The Reservation is also home to 433 Natives belonging to other Tribes and another 9,500 persons of other ethnic groups, mostly Euro-Americans and Hispanics. The Southern Ute Tribal Court sponsors this grant application. It manages all offense types for local Natives except charges slated for federal prosecution. For almost 3 years the Tribal Court has operated an accountability-based Wellness Court for youth alcohol and drug offenders. The goals and objectives of this program are to promote comprehensive wellness goals, monitor participants urine analysis(UA) results, increase school attendance and participation, participation in treatment utilizing individual and group counseling, and other wellness activities. The performance measures for this program are: increase number of wellness events per quarter; increase number of wellness events per year; increase percentage of agencies who report improved access to client information at 6 months; and increase percentage of agencies who report improved access to client information at 1 year.
CA/NCF