Award Information
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2011, $599,025)
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 to transition successfully from incarceration to the community. OJJDP will provide grants to support mentoring and other transitional services essential to reintegrating juvenile offenders into their communities. Grants will be used to mentor juvenile offenders during secure 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. This program is authorized by the Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011, Pub. L. 112-110.
Twin Oaks Juvenile Development (TOJD), a 501(c)(3), non-for-profit agency, proposes an innovative, evidence-based, mentoring initiative to reduce delinquency, enhance public safety and increase community partnerships. Project Connect is a residential and community-based mentoring strategy that provides a support system to assist committed youth with a successful transition back into the community. The program builds on recent research on mentoring programs, aftercare services and prior successful implementations of the model. Project Connect employs a "wrap around" approach to aftercare, establishing a Community Action Team (CAT) to support and guide at-risk youth as they re-enter their communities. The CAT Liaison/Mentor serves as the offender's primary mentor for the duration of the program. Project Connect has established partnerships with numerous public and private organizations and community collaborators to provide a program for juvenile offenders that coordinates mentoring and aftercare services in a structured, supportive, and seamless process. The program will serve approximately 100 committed male and female youth for 18 to 24 months. Project Connect is designed to reduce recidivism, enhance public safety, improve client outcomes and expand public and private partnerships.
CA/NCF