Rocky Boy Youth Violence Prevention Project

The primary goals of the OJJDP youth violence portfolio are to promote the wellbeing of children, youth, and families; reduce violence; and improve community capacity to address all forms of violence. This program supports the enhancement of OJJDP’s youth violence prevention initiatives by inviting OJJDP localities presently implementing the National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention (Forum), Community-Based Violence Prevention, and/or the Defending Childhood initiatives to apply for enhancement funding to adopt practices and implement models from a different program to achieve their shared violence prevention objectives. This program serves to encourage current initiative sites to enhance, integrate, and align youth violence prevention strategies; coordinate existing resources; engage in community education and outreach; develop and maintain strong collaborations; increase the involvement of youth and families in decision making; and engage the faith community, media, law enforcement, advocates, victim services, business, and other key partners in collective action. These efforts are authorized under Department of Justice Appropriations Act, 2015 (Pub. L. 113-235).

The Chippewa Cree Tribe will utilize grant funds to address family dysfunction and trauma on the Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation. Project goals are to: 1) Reduce children’s exposure to violence by maintaining a trauma-informed systems response through the prevention of bullying, family violence prevention, and teen-dating violence; 2) Continue advocacy and partnerships that promote cultural resilience and eliminate risk factors affecting children and 3) Reduce incidences of domestic violence and sexual assault advocacy by resuming advocacy work, improving the systemic response protocols for domestic violence/substance abuse and ensuring safety measures are available to community members. The Tribe has identified the following objectives: 1) Conduct a community-wide needs assessment regarding family dysfunction and trauma-exposure to better inform planning efforts, as measured by development and implementation of needs assessment instruments to at least 250 households within the community, compilation of instruments, and development of a report; 2) Develop a comprehensive community-wide strategic plan for addressing the needs already identified and emerging from the Needs Assessment, as measured by convening of strategic planning meetings, development of common goals and objectives, and the development of the planning document; 3) Expand engagement, collaboration, and coordination to promote systems and policy change as measured by engaging at least 20 community stakeholders, increasing leveraged resources by at least 10%, the development of at least 1 Memorandum of Understanding, improvement of at least 1 system wide set of policies and procedures, and at least 4 media events; 4) Implement community-wide training to at least 50 participants, with at least 80% of trained participants reflecting increases in knowledge, skills, or abilities; as measured by training records (agendas, sign in sheets) and pre- and post-tests; 5) Implement the Strengthening Families evidence-based practice, serving at least 50 families, as measured by training records (agendas, sign in sheets and pre- and post-tests); and 6) Decrease the percentage of youth who offend, re-offend, are victimized, and are re-victimized by at least 10%, as measured by law enforcement records, and court records.

CA/NCF