Orange County Juvenile Delinquency Drug Court Program - Enhancement and Expansion for the Delinquency Drug Court Program.

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) envisions a nation where our children are healthy, educated, and free from violence. If they come into contact with the juvenile justice system, the contact should be rare, fair, and beneficial to them. To meet this vision, this program will focus on increasing the effectiveness of juvenile drug courts by: (1) supporting programs or strategies that recognize and engage the family as a valued partner in all components of the program; (2) supporting local training programs or teams that educate practitioners and their families to meet the needs of the adolescent client and include adolescent brain development, integrated treatment, trauma-informed care, cultural competency, and strong judicial interaction; (3) supporting the development of local programs that will engage stakeholders and build or enhance partnerships among judges, representatives from behavioral health treatment programs, juvenile justice, social services, school and vocational training programs, law enforcement, probation, prosecution, defense, and community organizations; (4) supporting existing juvenile drug courts to monitor and evaluate current practices to develop strategies to create policies and procedures that will address and provide solutions to identified local barriers and (5) developing and implementing data management systems, including disaggregated data by race and ethnicity of participants.

The Orange County Juvenile Drug Court Program (DCP) project will provide male and female nonviolent juveniles with substance use disorders an opportunity to successfully rehabilitate from substance abuse by increasing engagement activities with juveniles and their families and increasing the number of juveniles that participate in the outpatient treatment program. This project will serve 80 juveniles and their families over the two year grant period. DCP will enhance their existing family services component in an effort to further involve guardians in the juvenile's rehabilitation. Through this project, DCP will work to reduce recidivism and substance use among its DCP clients; increase clients’ likelihood for rehabilitation through early, continuous, and intensive judicially supervised treatment, random drug testing, the use of graduated incentives/sanctions; and improve clients success through targeted interventions, rehabilitative services and service referrals. CA/NCF