Mentoring, case management, employment services, and wrap-around supportive services for transitioning offenders.

The Second Chance Act (P.L. 110-199) authorizes grants to government agencies and nonprofit groups to provide employment assistance, substance abuse treatment, housing, family programming, mentoring, victims' support, and other services to help adult and juvenile ex-offenders make a successful transition from incarceration to the community. In support of this goal, OJJDP will provide grants to support mentoring and other transitional services essential to reintegrating juvenile offenders into their communities. The grants will be used to mentor juvenile offenders during confinement, through transition back to the community, and post-release; to provide transitional services to assist them in their reintegration into the community; and to support training in offender and victims issues. Targeted youth must be younger than 18 years old. The initiative's legislative authority is found in the Department of Justice Appropriations Act, 2010 (Pub. L. 111-117).

The Young Adult Guidance Center (YAGC), Inc. requests funding for the establishment of YAGCs Second Chance For Success Mentoring Project. The project will serve 240 transitioning juvenile offenders, under the age of 18, returning to Fulton County, Georgia from Georgia juvenile correctional facilities. The vision for Second Chance is to increase ex-offenders rates of employment through job training and placement services; meet other critical needs by providing wrap-around supportive services through extensive case management, and strengthen the social networks and supports of ex-inmates through mentoring. Gang involvement, delinquency, violence, and other destructive behaviors often occur as the lack of attachment in young people to supportive adults who can assist them in problem solving during the many challenges faced during adolescence and young adulthood. Through establishing quality mentoring relationships, these youth will experience the healthy attachments needed to assist them on a path of emotional, social, and cognitive development. Second Chances supplemental offerings will provide these offenders with additional services and supports that with complement the mentoring services and aid in smooth reentry. Project evaluation will address the progress toward attaining goals, will be both formative and summative, and will document the actual fidelity of project implementation.

CA/NCF