Urban Children are Really Essential (U-CARE)

The OJJDP FY 10 Earmarks Program furthers the Department's mission by providing grants, cooperative agreements, and other assistance authorized by the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, as amended, to organizations identified in the Conference Report to accompany the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2010 (P.L. 111-117), H.R. Conf. Rep. No. 111-366 at 702-714.

Urban Dreams U-CARE (Urban Children Are Really Essential) program will continue to work with the at-risk youth in Ames, Des Moines, and Waterloo. The U-CARE program will develop plans to expand nationally to communities in Washington, D.C.; Raleigh, NC; Dayton, OH; and Los Angeles, CA. The continued focus of the program is the development and implementation of local programs that provide direct prevention services, high-risk youth intervention services, and/or systems improvement projects to increase local capacity to serve targeted youth. The goal of U-CARE's program is to lower disproportionate minority contact (DMC) rates with the juvenile justice system through increasing systems' capacity to leverage internal resources to sustain innovative, best-practice programming. The Urban Dreams Wayne Ford Applied Research Institute will work with Simpson College Urban Studies Institute (SUSI) along with other universities to research best practices with the objectives to decrease minority contact and confinement and increase drop-out prevention and re-engagement. NCA/NCF