Coordinating Council Meeting April 10, 2024

[00:00:08] Julie Herr: Good afternoon, and welcome to the meeting of the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. My name is Julie Herr, and I am the Designated Federal Officer for today's meeting. This meeting is now officially called to order. For those who are in the room with us today, please be aware that we are webcasting this event.

The recording will be posted along with a meeting transcript or notes on the Coordinating Council's website, www.juvenilecouncil.gov, within 90 days. Questions or comments from members of the public may be submitted via the Council's website. A handout with this URL is available at our resource table for those of you who are in the room, and this URL will also be provided in Webex for our virtual attendees. All written questions will receive a response subsequent to the meeting. With that, I'm going to go ahead and turn the meeting over to Administrator Liz Ryan, our Coordinating Council Vice Chair.

[00:01:09] Liz Ryan: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Federal Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice. I want to welcome everyone here in the room and also everybody joining us virtually. We're going to kick off our meeting by hearing from the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs, Amy Solomon. I just want to say that AAG Solomon has a long and distinguished career in criminal justice reform.

She was nominated by President Biden and confirmed by a bipartisan vote about a year ago. Prior to her service here at OJP, she was Vice President of Criminal Justice at Arnold Ventures. She was also previously at OJP where she ran the-- I want to call it the Federal Interagency Reentry Council. She also spent a decade at the Urban Institute and previously worked at NIJ, and we're very excited to have her here, and we appreciate her support of the Council's work, so I'll turn it over to you.

[00:02:14] Amy Solomon: Thank you, Liz, and thank you, Julie, and hello, everyone. I'll say that it was because of my work with the Federal Interagency Reentry Council that I have such affection for this body because when we bring together experts from across the federal government with our external experts and practitioner leaders, there's so many walls that we can break through here, so I just appreciate the opportunity to sit at the table with you today, and I'm looking forward to another productive meeting of the Coordinating Council.

I have to say, I continue to be energized when I think back to the meeting that we held on-site in Houston last September. It was so exciting to be out in the field to see firsthand some of the great work that we are all trying to lift up and to hear directly from advocates and professionals and, of course, youth themselves who are carrying this work. I want to thank Liz and Julie and the whole team from OJJDP and, of course, every one of you for being at this table and being so dedicated to the work of the Coordinating Council.

You have generated tremendous momentum over the last year, gathering insights and perspectives from practitioners and experts, you've listened to testimonies from youth with lived experience, you've learned about exciting new programs, and you've also heard about the challenges youth-serving professionals are facing. With the help of expert practitioners and presenters, your subcommittees have identified a number of recommendations for meeting those challenges. Now, we're entering the next important stage of the work here at the Council, and that is to prioritize the recommendations that we can create a plan of action.

The timing is right here. We've made such great strides in recent years to improve system response to system-involved youth. In fact, the number of youth in residential placement has dropped substantially, about 77% in the 20 years between 2000 and 2020. More young people are being diverted from the justice system and getting treatment, services, and support. More states, though still not enough in my view, are taking steps to keep youth out of the adult system. Policymakers and practitioners are relying more and more on evidence-informed approaches to take developmental factors into account.

These are all very positive, even transformative developments in the youth justice field. As we inch closer to the 50th anniversary of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, which we will be celebrating in a big way with Liz's leadership in September, we should celebrate all of this incredible progress. While we should be encouraged, we cannot be content or complacent.

In fact, there are some troubling signs that we need to pay close attention to. In spite of the fact that violent crime is now down nationally after a couple years on the rise, there's also a false narrative that crime is continuing to get worse and that young people represent a particularly dangerous threat to our community. Make no mistake, we should take any reports of crime and violence very seriously. As the Attorney General said last week at our Community Violence Intervention Conference, there's no acceptable level of violence, and that is the case we know whether it's committed by adults or juveniles, but the facts bear out that only a very small share of violent crime is attributed to juveniles.

More generally, we know that purely punitive sanctions, especially where youth are involved, are not the answer. We know from research, the young people naturally age out of most criminal behavior, and we also know that two things work against the aging out process, trauma, and incarceration. We also know that young people have been confronted with some serious challenges over the last few years. We, of course, had a global pandemic that kept kids out of school and isolated from one another, many lost caregivers and loved ones. Now that the public health emergency has lifted, and public benefits have expired, we also know that many families and their children are falling back into poverty.

In addition, opioids and other drugs have taken a huge toll on kids and their families. Apart from the direct damage and despair caused by drugs, children are more likely to suffer physical and sexual abuse when they're in households where someone has a substance use disorder, and the mental health of our young people's reach a point of crisis. Levels of depression, anxiety, and self-harm have increased significantly in recent years to unprecedented levels according to the surge in general.

Many kids who face these challenges and setbacks end up in contact with the juvenile justice system or the justice system, and I think that we all agree that arrests and incarceration are not the best ways to deal with these challenges. We need to find ways to address the needs collaboratively without deepening involvement in the justice system wherever possible, and we need to do what we can to put them on a path to success. Liz and our team have been working so closely with our partners in the field.

They've been hearing from young people firsthand to find out how we can create a system that keeps contact with the police and the courts to a minimum while ensuring a response that is both fair and beneficial to our youth. In other words, a system that can set up our kids to succeed and to thrive. Today you're going to hear about a new initiative designed to support positive intervention and deeper connection with families and communities. It's called the Continuum of Care for Youth and Communities Framework.

The goal here is to provide services and opportunities built around protective factors to create environments that foster positive development. The framework sets up a network of support for youth that reduces exposure to community risk by involving school engagement, supporting healthy stable families, and connecting youth to mentoring, to positive recreational opportunities, to job training, and other pro-social activities. This is a big part of our mission at OJP, to build up community infrastructure and to strengthen the role of the community as co-producers of safety and justice.

We're going to be making some grant announcements built around this framework in the coming days, and you're going to get a preview of that in today's meeting. I'm so excited about this initiative and this new framework, and really want to credit Liz and her team for vision and leadership here in developing something that's going to be so consequential for the field. Back to the task at hand today, we are going to be asking you also to begin prioritizing the recommendations from the council subcommittees, so that they can inform a report to the president and Congress that we hope to issue later this year.

We want to make sure that we're capturing the best ideas from the experts and articulating them in a cohesive way for the nation. We are at a critical place here in the juvenile justice arena. Advances in science and innovations in practice have given us the tools to respond to youth more effectively, more justly, and more humanely. Our young people are better served today, and our communities are safer and stronger.

We cannot afford to see our nation take a step back. Your work is a part of this coordinating council, is so critical and indispensable to continue our path forward, so I know you're going to have a truly productive afternoon and conversation. Again, we're counting on you. We so appreciate your commitment and your expertise at the table, and I just want to thank you all for helping us draft a plan forward that's going to be helpful to the entire field. Thank you so much and thank you, Liz.

[00:10:47] Liz Ryan: Thank you so much, Assistant Attorney General Solomon, for those welcoming remarks. I really appreciate your kind introduction, and I want to also thank you especially, Amy, for your guidance, your tireless devotion to young people, their health, and well-being. Your leadership both supports and propels OJJDP's drive to serve youth and to transform the nation's juvenile justice system, and we are grateful for your guidance.

I'd also like to thank each and every one of you who serve on the coordinating council for your commitment to fulfilling the council's charge, coordinating the diverse federal programs that strive to prevent delinquent behavior by young people and protect children from exploitation. It's a huge task, one that I know everyone here takes very seriously, so I want to thank you for that. We all know that no single agency or organization can meet all the needs of every single young person, that's why this coordinating council includes representatives from so many intersecting fields and agencies.

Every young person has unique needs that cut across numerous disciplines, and we must partner strategically. I'm grateful for the many partnerships represented here today, and I want to mention just a couple of them, so to AmeriCorps for partnering with OJJDP to hire system-impacted young people. Thank you for giving them the support and the guidance and practical, relevant work and service experience to help them grow into active contributing members of their communities. Thank you.

To USDA, [chuckles] I want to thank you for joining OJJDP in an interagency agreement with the Institute for Youth, Family, and Community and the Division of Youth and 4-H. Together, we are funding a mentoring program that incorporates 4-H programming and values. The National Institute of Food and Agriculture will implement the mentoring program targeting young people from rural communities and youth who are involved in or at risk of involvement in the juvenile justice system, so thank you.

As Amy mentioned, the focus of today's meeting is to talk about OJJDP's Continuum of Care for Communities Framework. Decades of research and success in other fields, including the housing and healthcare sectors, supports this approach. OJJDP's framework emphasizes evidence-based programs and practices so that young people can access needed resources and services where they live and at every point in the juvenile justice system.

This framework takes a holistic approach to young people and their families, focusing on prevention and early intervention for the vast majority of youth, and supporting both those who are at risk for delinquency and those at risk for victimization in their communities. For young people at higher risk of deeper involvement in the juvenile justice system, the framework emphasizes intensive, targeted, evidence-based programming. Communities that implement a continuum of care for youth, are better able to assess their needs, identify gaps in programs and services, and allocate resources accordingly.

I'm excited to tell you that tomorrow, I'll be in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to announce the recipients of OJJDP funding under our fiscal year 2023 Building Local Continuums of Care for Youth Success Initiative. In all, OJJDP has awarded more than $17 million to 26 grantees, that includes 6 states, 17 local jurisdictions, and 3 training and technical assistance providers.

Two of our grantees are in Pennsylvania, so that's why we'll be there. During the event, they will tell us about their initiatives that they've designed, and how they will use OJJDP funding to address youth needs and pursue the goals outlined across OJJDP's Continuum of Care Framework, and I look forward to sharing more about that framework with all of you here today.

The continuum of care is a long-term commitment for OJJDP and our grantees, but I believe it could also serve as an important tool to guide the council's activities and recommendations. At the last council meeting in December, we heard from two panels of experts with a wealth of expertise in the juvenile justice system. We asked them to respond to two questions. One, how can the council's member agencies enhance the coordination of services for youth to help ensure young people never enter the juvenile justice system?

Two, how can the member agencies coordinate to increase youth access to opportunities and services and decrease the barriers so that justice-involved youth have the best chance of success in their home communities? In addition to hearing recommendations from our panelists, we invited members of the public to submit their responses to the two questions using a unique page that we created on the council's website. Today we're going to spend some time prioritizing those recommendations as well as the many others we have received from presenters, members, and panelists over the course of the last board meetings.

These recommendations will help inform our activities moving forward as well as our annual report to the president and Congress due in January of 2025. I am especially pleased that many of the recommendations that this council received, came from young people themselves, including those who spoke to the council in October of 2022. We all know that those who are closest to the problem typically have informed insights and solutions to that problem. Young people are uniquely qualified to respond to questions about the programs and services they need.

Again, I want to thank you all for your commitment to the nation's young people and for all that you do to make our juvenile justice system fair and responsive to young people and community needs, and I look forward to a productive afternoon. Now we're going to do introductions from the council, maybe we'll just start from my left here, and we can just go around. If each of you could share your name, your organization, and anything else. Thank you.

[00:18:01] Michael Smith: Thank you. Michael Smith, CEO of AmeriCorps.

[00:18:10] Liz Simons: Thank you. [chuckles] Liz Simons, Chair of the Board of the Heising-Simons Foundation and The Marshall Project. I'll just add that I stand for our grantees, the organizations who work on the ground who we support via our foundation.

[00:18:26] Calvin Johnson: Good afternoon. My name is Calvin Johnson. I'm the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Research Evaluation and Monitoring at HUD.

[00:18:36] Meghan Bishop: [unintelligible 00:18:36] My name is Meghan Bishop, and I'm a member of the Native Village of Afognak in Alaska, and I'm a Senior Counselor to Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs, Bryan Newland at the Department of the Interior.

[00:18:51] Deborah Spitz: Hi, good afternoon. Deborah Spitz, with the US Department of Education in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, and I manage the Title 1 Part D program.

[00:19:03] Jennifer Kemp: Good afternoon. I am Jennifer Kemp with the US Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration, and I direct the youth and the reentry workers, BGA.

[00:19:15] Michael Mendoza: Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Michael Mendoza, I'm a member of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition based in California, and I'm also a criminal justice consultant working today in juvenile justice work.

[00:19:29] Shaina Vanek: Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Shaina Vanek. I'm a Senior Policy Analyst at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and my role is to be the resident subject-matter expert on all things justice-related, so working with justice-involved individuals and their families.

[00:19:47] Tib Campise: Hello. I'm Tib Campise [unintelligible 00:19:48]. I'm from Military Community and Family Policy. I work in child youth advocacy with the Department of Defense.

[00:19:58] Dr. Nataki MacMurray: Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Dr. Nataki MacMurray from the Office of National Drug Control Policy in our Office of Public Health, where we focus on issues around prevention, intervention, treatment, and recovery. Of course, I'm the representative that focuses and always raises the question of how this impacts our young people. Thanks.

[00:20:17] Lourdes Rosado: Hello, everyone. My name is Lourdes Rosado. I'm President and General Counsel of LatinoJustice PRLDEF. We're a multi-issue nonprofit, and one of the areas we work on, is criminal legal system reform around policing and mass incarceration. Glad to be here.

[00:20:36] Bonita Williams: Good afternoon. My name is Bonita Williams. I'm a National Program Leader with the National Institute of Food and Agriculture in the Division of Youth and 4-H. Thank you.

[00:20:53] Becky Zornick: Hello. I'm Becky Zornick for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration within HHS. I'm Deputy Director for SAMHSA's National Mental Health and Substance Use Policy Laboratory.

[00:21:07] Renee Rodriguez-Betancourt: Good afternoon, everyone. I'm very excited to be here today, especially in this meeting, especially coming to find out hopefully who the new grantees are going to be on these grants that are going to be awarded or have been awarded. I am Judge Renee Rodriguez-Betancourt. I am a district court judge in the state of Texas for the 449th District Court. I preside over all juvenile delinquency cases in my county. My county is close to a million population. It's the sixth-largest county in the state of Texas.

[00:21:38] Miranda Lynch-Smith: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Miranda Lynch-Smith. I'm the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Human Services Policy. I'm representing the Department of Health and Human Services. My office, which is the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, is really the main policy advisor to the Secretary in the department, and we focus mostly on human services issues, economic mobility, and the integration of our social safety net.

[00:22:09] Liz Ryan: Thank you. Next, I'd like to invite up Kristen Kracke, who is the Associate Administrator of the Policy Coordination Division at OJJDP and is also the chair of the Policy Subcommittee for the Council, to talk about the continuum of care. As he’s queuing up the PowerPoint, I just want to mention that in the 2018 reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, Congress put language into the act about having OJJDP establish a continuum of care, prevention, and intervention services for young people.

We take that very seriously, and so that's what we're going to talk about today. We thought that this could also potentially be, as I mentioned, a useful framework for the council's work as well, so I'll give it to you, Kristen.

[00:23:13] Kristen Kracke: Hey, Juan, can you assist here? It's not advancing. Ah, there it goes. All right. Thank you, Liz. Welcome, everyone. I'm pleased to be here today to talk to you. I've talked to both of the subcommittees about this framework, and I'm pleased to see those of you who are here again and to address the council membership directly. I will go into a little bit more detail around the context today, and we'll lift up what Liz and Amy have both shared about the framework as well.

This wheel is a continuum of care for communities serving justice-involved youth. You should have a copy of this in your packet because I'm going to scroll through different slides that won't have the wheel, so you have it in your packet for reference, and then I'm going to walk you through it pie-piece by pie-piece. OJJDP is using it as a framework to highlight the range of programs necessary to support youth from prevention to early intervention through high intervention in the community to out-of-home placement to reintegration.

As I mentioned, the council subcommittees have looked at this continuum, and they have found this continuum also to be a useful framework as well in helping to organize and coordinate our federal interagency work for the council. I'll talk a little bit more about this shortly. Kellie and I will be providing subcommittee reports in a minute. At a very high level, this wheel represents a broad array of the service delivery supports that are evidence-based and developmentally aligned. Services that we use through the wheel should be evidence-based and developmentally aligned.

In addition, system reform and cultural competence are core principles that can and should be overlaid throughout this wheel. The broader service fields, and I'm expanding beyond youth justice to all the service fields, and those individuals working in the fields and in communities, have always recognized the need for a continuum of service. This is not new language, necessary. It's a fairly common language. It's a common concept. In earlier years, these efforts may have been called something different, but at the heart, the process behind it has always existed, which is this.

By building and strengthening a continuum, the community ensures that youth needs can be addressed at any point along the way, and the earlier, the better. You will see that the socio-ecological framework or sometimes referred to as a public health approach, is at the center of the continuum of care, with children in the center, surrounded by family and then community supports. In this framework, we have embedded and incorporated schools in that community. This is a long-standing evidence-based approach, and it's used across disciplines and service fields, so I hope that it will help the continuum of care framework that we're using for youth justice, resonate with you and the folks in other service sectors.

We'll talk a little bit about why it matters. One reason that the youth justice field recognized this need for a continuum early on, was because of the strong foundation of research that exists regarding what works and what doesn't when it comes to delinquency. Since the first part of the prior century, which sounds like a really long time, [laughs] the youth justice field has turned to research to inform the best approaches and strategies in preventing, intervening with, and reducing youth crime and violence, and in redirecting youth to have more productive lives building in those off-ramps.

Research over the past 30 years has shown that prevention continues to be a sound investment and that the further youth progresses into the justice system, the worse their outcomes, and that is true in terms of education, employment, health, and even life expectancy. When compared to community-based alternatives, confinement of youth results in higher rates of recidivism, so it does not actually accomplish public safety, that's grounded in the research.

What is it? It's a framework for youth justice that can work as a conceptual tool at multiple levels. We're going to start with the community first, but Liz and Amy have already introduced the concept that it's a framework at the level for OJJDP as well as potentially for the council and how we organize and look at the service systems specific to youth justice. I'm going to talk about it from the perspective of the community first and its value.

Continuum of Care as a framework reflects the juvenile justice practices and programming. It represents community-level system of supports and services that are responsive to the needs of individual youth and families, as well as to the larger community's goals of public safety and accountability. It is a framework for building the community resources and services based on the needs of that community, by and for the community. Communities that have well-designed and implemented continuums of care, have strong prevention infrastructure, and intentionally intervene early with youth at risk and when they get into trouble.

The youth justice Continuum of Care provides a variety, for example, a variety of adolescent diversion programs and informal interventions to prevent youth from getting more deeply involved in a formal system, whether it's juvenile justice or child welfare, just more formal system involvement. However, when needed, the community can also immediately respond with intensive programming and supervision for high-need and complex care needs of youth, including those that need out-of-home placement and during their reintegration back home to the community, so the wheel has the process flow through it with the arrows that you see.

It also helps ensure that public safety is prioritized, and importantly, that limited funds are spent in the most cost-effective ways, really moving those services and programming to the front end upstream to catch and support youth and families when they need it most, and it can be most effective. Again, it really is about helping youth and families receive the right services and supports, and as noted earlier, at the right time, early. As I mentioned, OJJDP is also using and adopting this framework as a tool for assessing and supporting our own federal efforts, providing training and technical assistance, and supports to communities to utilize this framework to advance effective youth justice practice and policy.

As Liz mentioned, in fact, not only is it a good idea, it is now grounded in our statute. The Continuum Care is literally a part of the law that established OJJDP. The latest reauthorization of 2018 lists for purposes, one of which is to support a continuum of care for at-risk youth and youth who come into contact with the justice system. Let's take a minute to walk through the continuum. As I go through each section of the wheel, it is important to focus on the overall concept. Every service and system that each of you all work in, may describe what goes into each section of this wheel a little bit differently.

There's differences across our service sectors and folks can debate whether services prevention, or intervention, or what defines primary or secondary prevention, et cetera. Those debates can at times distract from the overarching concept in conversation, so I invite you today to stay focused on the overall framework and to consider or reflect how your agency work fits in here in the broader lens.

Let's take the green part of the wedge and talk about prevention. Prevention programs and prevention's a concept everybody understands, but you may view it from your service sector's lens. In our context, it's programs that reduce risk or promote protective factors for us. Examples of that are mentoring, arts and recreation, supporting children exposed to violence or healing and centered care, trauma-informed services. Those are the same prevention services that I'm sure exist in many of your service sectors as well.

Then as you move to the blue section, intervention is divided here between low, medium, and high. Low intervention, this first wedge at the top of the screen, disrupts youth formal involvement in the system. These are things like pre-arrest, diversion, mediation. This is pre-court involvement. Then as you move to intervention medium, the middle blue wedge here at the bottom, this is the intervention wedge that supports youth who are formally part of the court process. It may involve specialized services and programs such as treatment courts or restorative justice approaches.

Then as you continue along in the blue at the intervention high, this section of the wheel provides intensive supervision for high-risk youth, including those that are adjudicated and on probation. Examples are wraparound services, specialized education, targeted therapies, cognitive behavioral treatment, et cetera. Then progressing around the wheel to out-of-home placement, this is where we are providing supports for youth who are out of home that may pose a serious risk to safety. Their examples are therapeutic foster care, group homes, non-secure placement, and corrections.

We'll talk about the interplay across our various systems in a minute because you'll see child welfare in the orange and the out-of-home placement as well as youth justice, and there's an overlap there, many dually involved youth in that system, so we would put all of that in out-of-home. Then lastly, the pink, community reintegration. This is aftercare services to support children returning home, employment, housing, education programs, partnerships with volunteer service organizations, et cetera.

As you go around the wheel, you see, as we get to community reintegration, there's a lot of overlap between community integration and the community-based prevention services. The difference is, which of our kids are accessing those services? We need more opportunities for justice-involved youth, who are reintegrating into the community, are often left out of those same prevention services.

A couple of things to highlight. It's important to emphasize that this graphic reflects a process and a framework of service provision, it does not reflect the volume of the population impacted, so all these wedges are equal size. In fact, an effective continuum of care should mean that the vast majority of youth are within the prevention, in the early intervention, the low intervention slices of service. The volume of youth should get smaller as we proceed around the continuum, with the lowest number of youth in these deep-end out-of-home placement arrangements.

It also does not reflect those types of policy changes and systems improvements that impact that flow. This is really just about the service provisions. It is those system changes in their form that does impact the flow, that's not represented on this chart. Just to emphasize that point, currently, we spend the most of our resources in the most expensive and least effective part of our system, the out-of-home placement wedge, which is orange, that actually impacts the fewest number of our youth.

That is something the framework can be helpful in helping us orient to that, and then working the system to help influence that that not be the case, and to look at how we're allocating our resources and providing effective supports to disrupt that pattern. Understanding this process and that movement of youth across the continuum, does help us at the federal level to look at how we are effectively setting policy and practice and allocating those resources so that we get better results and outcomes for youth. Oh, whoops, I skipped ahead. That was a teaser. [chuckles]

All right, so let's look at this framework from the federal perspective. We see much of the work of other agencies as supporting justice-involved youth as the community, so that in that sociological framework for the public health approach, the ring that says community around the middle, which I noted earlier, also includes schools. In addition, many of our federal agency programs here at the council, focus on the green and the blue areas, and also, there's a lot of need for youth returning to the community in the community reintegration.

Your federal agency has programs that work across every slice of the wheel, but by and large, they are concentrated as a whole. If we look across the council, they're concentrated in prevention, the early intervention, and then the community reintegration. There are some exceptions to that, as I noted, and here's some examples. I think in the subcommittee we talked about the power of this framework at the federal level to be interactive and to align our federal agency work along this continuum, so right now, the arrows are intended to not cut across the words in the wedge so you can still see that in the wheel slice.

These are just some examples. We didn't represent every federal agency because we want you to still be able to see the wheel, but there are examples from every one of your programs that touch on this wheel. We did illustrate one from every section here. It really is the interplay across our service systems and our individual federal programs, and the framework really has a potential for organizing our federal and interagency programs and policies. Why is this relevant to the council? As the coordinating council, it really is critical that we speak from one common framework.

The potential for this tool is just in an interactive way, how we work together to assess gaps, to identify opportunities for youth that may not exist or may not exist to scale, and I gave the example earlier about youth that are coming out of the system and reintegrating into the community having less access, less opportunities than youth that are being served in the prevention realm. How can we open up opportunities for youth? It's also a good tool for coordinating across our agencies the activities of the council and coordinating activities across each of our programs. Then lastly, to realign investments. We also think it would be helpful for the council to use this framework to organize the council's report.

I will end by saying, as I mentioned, it's critical that we all speak from one common framework, even if our agencies only impact one piece of the continuum of care for youth, that it can serve as a common framework, a common messaging tool, and that we use a research-driven model that aligns closely to what young people are saying they need. This framework does that.

We're going to turn next to the subcommittee reports. I'm going to give it back to Liz, but you will hear from Kellie and I in the subcommittee reports that we will share some of what the agency members' feedback on those subcommittees were, and the subcommittees will make recommendations to you for the framework. With that, I'm going to turn it back to Liz for any clarifying questions.

[00:41:50] Liz Ryan: Thank you so much, Kristen. I want to see if any members of the council have questions for Kristen about the framework. Okay, Liz, go ahead.

[00:42:03] Liz Simons: Thank you.

[00:42:03] Liz Ryan: If you could speak into the mic.

[00:42:05] Liz Simons: Yes. You can hear me now, right? Thank you. [chuckles] One thing I noticed that to some extent this is embedded, but to some extent, I don't see it, our safety net, and I'm thinking in the preventative piece. For example, do we have organizations and services that make sure that children and their families have access to adequate food, healthcare, education, and housing? I feel these are things that can tremendously impact children's and their families' risk at entering into the system.

The other piece of that, is do we have programs that help address situations where children are charged in a way that is impractical, with fines, fees, and what they call restitution, in ways that put them into debt? I know there's work being done in other realms there, but it seems like as we think about what children and families need, safety net and perhaps remedies for practices and policies that make it really hard for them to reenter.

[00:43:26] Kristen: Thank you for that, Liz. I would share that safety and well-being are definitely part of that prevention prong. It's not directly preventing delinquency, it is providing protective factors to support safety and well-being for you, so that definitely falls within that green slice of the wheel for us. Then just to address the fines and fees, I think that's a good example of policies and system improvement practices that influence the movement across the wheel.

This is a static graphic designed to capture the types of services that need to be in place to supportive youth, it does not capture that movement, but part of that work is absolutely instrumental to making sure that we're responding to kids at the earliest part of the continuum, that we're moving them back into the earlier parts of the continuum. We're getting them upstream. We're not setting them up for more negative outcomes because we're putting them in financial jeopardy or whatever the policy case may be.

The policy interplay, there could be a million examples like that, that interplay throughout the wheel, but the wheel serves as a great way to help have that conversation with the community and with states and us in a federal interagency way about what the impact of those policies are.

[00:44:58] Liz Simons: Thank you. It might be interesting in some of the examples, add some of the safety net pieces, make sure that that access is part of our thinking here. Thank you.

[00:45:07] Kristen: Thanks.

[00:45:10] Liz Ryan: Other questions from the council? Okay. I just want to mention, Liz, I'm glad you mentioned the fees and fines. The Department of Justice issued a dear colleague letter this past year. It's quite lengthy and has a lot in it, but there's one sentence in it that is critical, that says that youth under the age of 18 are presumed indigent and therefore unable to pay fees and fines. I'm glad you raised that because that's something that we, as the department, is trying to ensure is fully implemented in the states, and reaching out to all the courts to make sure they're utilizing that, so thank you.

[00:45:57] ?Kristen: Rebecca had a question.

[00:45:58] ?Liz Ryan: Yes, thank you.

[00:45:59] Becky: Sorry, I'm a little late, is my hand up? [chuckles] My question is also around the green prevention area. In behavioral health, just like you've broken down the interventions into the three tiers, we also do that with prevention, so we have the universal and then the more targeted. I'm curious if that's also within that wedge, or if you're thinking of prevention that way as well.

[00:46:25] Kristen: That is an excellent point and ties back to what I was saying about the debate in the fields and the sectors and the disciplines. We tried to build this in a way that was broad and general enough to try to avoid some of those debates because we want something that cuts across disciplines, I guess that's the best way I would say that. Primary intervention to one is intervention, or deep intervention to another, depending on how you're approaching the work.

I would suspect everything that you, Rebecca, would define as prevention, was absolutely prevention for us, and even some of your intervention is prevention for us because we're the deep end of the system, and kids flow into ours after other interventions in earlier systems haven't been as effective as needed.

[00:47:26] Dr. Nataki: Good afternoon. Dr. Nataki MacMurray from the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Two comments I wanted to make about the continuum of care, and it aligns with what Rebecca mentioned. In various fields, we have these various models of our continuum. From the behavioral health side, we do have that it's almost a 180-degree compass that goes from primary prevention to intervention, I'm sorry, or treatment for the universal through selected and indicated risk level. However, if you look at what has been painted here, it's almost as if we conceptually made that compass from being a 180 compass and just closed the end and made it a circle, so it does encompass this, number one.

Number two, Department of Justice also has on the adult side, this idea of the sequential intercept model, which is also familiar to SAMHSA. Again, it's very linear as if once we get to one end of the model, then that's it, there's no longer a need, but again, if we close the ends of the loop, we would see this model in play. Then thirdly, it really does help us to think about the intersection of all of our various issues, whether or not we're seeing this from an issue around poverty, around unemployment of youth, whether we're talking about truancy, delinquency, substance use, mental health, et cetera.

The commonality of the young people that we are working to address and to support, is very much born out in the research, and so where things may jar a little bit from field to field, but they do very well fit on this wheel. I'm in support of the idea of having this continuum, even though there may be some slight movements around and putting it on what perspective and lens, it's in there as they say about-- I won't say the proprietary name of the spaghetti sauce, but it's in there-

[laughter]

-so kudos to the committees and subcommittees.

[00:49:35] Liz Ryan: Thank you so much. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you so much, Kristen, for that presentation and for the discussion on this.

[00:49:45] Kristen: Thank you all.

[00:49:46] Liz Ryan: We are going to now turn to the subcommittee report, so I'm going to invite up Kellie Blue, Associate Administrator for the Division on Youth Justice, Safety, and Innovation. I know I just butchered the name of that.

[00:49:58] Kellie Blue: Youth Justice System and Innovation.

[00:50:00] Liz Ryan: I'm sorry, Youth Justice System Innovation. Thank you.

[laughter]

[00:50:05] Kellie Blue: Good afternoon. On behalf of the Programs and Practice Subcommittee, I'm pleased to be here to report out on our activities. The subcommittee has met three times since the December of 2023 council meeting. We met in January, February, and March. I'm going to go ahead and pick up on our report out from March and I'm going to thank my colleague, Nataki, because I feel like she summed up exactly what happened at our subcommittee meeting in March where we had the opportunity to hear from Kristen about the continuum of care.

At that meeting, Kristen presented the continuum of care to the subcommittee members, subcommittee members shared general excitement to see this happening in the youth justice space and several subcommittee members also commented on the notion of continuum of care approaches and how this lined up with things that are happening in the public health arena. Part of the discussion during the subcommittee also was really digging into the relevance for the coordinating council agencies.

We got some really valuable input from the Department of Education, thank you, Deborah, to make sure that when we're looking at the continuum, that schools and education systems that they're there because when you first looked at that continuum, I think people on the subcommittee, they weren't quite seeing it but after having some discussion about it, and thank you, Kristen, and our colleagues at Education we were able to understand the role of the school. That was what happened at our March meeting around continuum of care.

We have also been working on reviewing and discussion recommendations for the annual report to Congress and also to inform the coordinated council's action plan. You will be learning more about that in a few minutes and actually, we'll be doing a super, wonderful, great deep dive into all of this. Basically, for our subcommittee, we started with nearly 100 recommendations. These recommendations came from ideas that were discussed and presented at past council meetings and also shared by members of the public through the council webpage. A lot of written testimony, we got.

I want you to be aware that input for these recommendations came from the youth panel that was held in October 2022 as part of a council meeting. If you recall, we also had the opportunity to travel to Harris County, Texas, and gather some wonderful input from the speakers and panelists at that meeting as well. We had the opportunity in April to go to the Department of Labor and engage with some really rich presentations and information that also helped inform these recommendations. Finally, we also gathered a lot of terrific information from the December the 2023 council member where we had panelists and experts from across other nations testify and provide testimony around use justice issues.

What we've been doing is we've been discussing all of these recommendations, there was a process of vetting recommendations internally within agencies and thank you subcommittee members for that task. I know what a task that is to take materials and recommendations and get them vetted through your agency. We also went through a process of prioritizing the recommendations as well. Ended up with a final list of 16 recommendations, and again, you're going to hear a lot more about this in a few minutes. One last activity I want to report on is the OJDP National Conference. As you know, the council approved the subcommittee to move forward with developing a track at the OJJDP National Conference to celebrate its 50th anniversary that will be held in November of 2024.

To date, the subcommittee has submitted to the OJJDP Planning Committee 10 sessions for consideration, of those 10 sessions, 7 sessions have been accepted and I believe there's an attachment with the report. It's a PowerPoint slide that just lays out the 7 sessions. This gives you a broad-based description. Based on the activities of the subcommittee in the past three months, the Programs and Practice Subcommittee makes the following recommendations to the Coordinating Council. The subcommittee recommends that the council adopt OJJDP's continuum of care as a guiding framework for its recommendations and work plan.

The subcommittee recommends that the council accept the seven proposed sessions for the track at the OJJDP 50th Annual Anniversary National Conference in November 2024. The subcommittee recommends that the council accept its shortened top 16 recommendations list for further consideration.

[00:55:52] Liz Ryan: Thank you, Kellie. We're going to hear a report from the other subcommittee but just to preview what's ahead in the conversation today, we're going to do a voice vote on the two subcommittee reports. We're going to take a short break, and then we're going to hear a little bit more in-depth about the process of determining these 16 and have some conversation about that, as well as have a group exercise around getting a sense from all of you the areas of focus for those priorities. We'll go a little bit more in-depth on that in the second half of the meeting. I'm now going to invite up Kristen to share the subcommittee report from the policy subcommittee.

[00:56:41] Kristen: Thank you, Liz. You'll hear some redundancy in the report out because our committees pursued a parallel process. The Policy Committee has met four times since the last coordinating council and during those four meetings, the members also reviewed and discussed the recommendations that we are presenting today to the full council. Just like the Program and Practice Subcommittee, we started with that collective nearly 100 recommendations, and through a process of discussion, internal agency vetting, and prioritization that our colleague Marcy will present after the break, this list was categorized and narrowed down to a final list of 16 for consideration of the full council member today.

We also discussed at the subcommittee level the annual report to the President in Congress which is detailed in the subcommittee report, noting that it's due 120 days after the last council meeting and will form the basis of the recommendations and the work plan presented in the annual report. These recommendations that we will be talking about today will be undergirding that report and that work plan. Then lastly, I presented to the policy subcommittee the continuum of care that we just presented in-depth to you. Members of the subcommittee discussed that continuum of care framework after we highlighted the range of programs necessary to support youth along each point of the continuum.

Then the subcommittee, we discussed at the federal agency level the various perspectives and I will note that Department of Defense has been using a multi-tiered system of support that was noted, that resonated with this framework. Other members of the committee noted that, for example, Cheri Hoffman from HHS noted that the child welfare system and the interplay with the juvenile justice system is seen throughout and certainly preventing a child from entering either system is very much embedded in the framework. Keeping kids out of the child welfare space would be of importance to HHS as well so we concurred in seeing the framework as a way to display that interplay.

Then also noting the overlap in the out-of-home placement section that I noted before. Then lastly, Jeff Buehler, representing Department of Ed, saw elements of the Education Title I, Part D Program in the prevention, out-of-home placement, and community reintegration wedges of the wheel. That's another example of how one federal agency, one department really interacts in multiple stages and places along that wheel. With that, the policy subcommittee also recommends to the council the adoption of the OJJDP's continuum of care as the guiding framework for its recommendations and work plan. The policy subcommittee also recommends that the council accept its shortened top 16 recommendations list for further consideration. Thank you.

[01:00:09] Liz Ryan: Thanks, Kristen. Before we do a voice vote on this, does anyone have any questions for either Kristen or Kellie on the subcommittee reports and recommendations? [silence] All right, we'll do a voice vote on the report outs and recommendations. All in favor, please say, "Aye."

[01:00:32] Members: Aye.

[01:00:37] Liz Ryan: The two sets of subcommittee reports have been adopted. Thank you. Since we're running a little bit ahead of schedule, I'm going to move to the next section. I'm going to ask Marcy Mistrett to please come up and to walk us through the recommendations. Marcy is a member of our policy coordination division and joined us earlier in the year. Welcome, Marcy.

[01:01:08] Marcy Mistrett: Thanks, Liz. Hi, everybody. Nice to see you all in person. It's been nice getting to know you over the past couple of months on phone. I am going to introduce more in detail how we got to these top 16 recommendations, which you have a copy of in your folder. If you want to look at them more closely there in your folder. Juan, how do I get to the other PowerPoint? Do I have to go through all of them? Oh, there we go. Thank you. Thank you for working magic. [chuckles]

As you've heard from in both the subcommittee report outs, we gathered these recommendations from numerous resources from the various council meetings to date, from the kickoff all the way through to the general public and feedback through our website. This represents a very broad range of input from folks that are working in the field, from agency members themselves, from young people in their own voices. I want to say that because where possible, we really aim to preserve both the language and the tone that came from all of those resources in the recommendations. I just want to note that.

As multiple people have noted, we had nearly 100 recommendations for this council to review and to narrow to a doable list. Y'all deserve a round of applause for getting us there because that is a hard task. [chuckles]

The next phase is that we reviewed, narrowed, and refined the recommendations. Over the past three months in both subcommittees, but primarily in the policy subcommittee, through one one-on-one conversations, we looked at all of the recommendations. Each member of the council prioritized those recommendations based on agency priorities and interests from the field, and then we matched those priorities and narrowed them and where possible, if there's duplicates or things that were really similar, merge them into one recommendation.

The recommendations then, the 16 top recommendations, you can see this follows what is presented in your document. There is a column that says what the recommendation is, then the primary agency that it impacts. The affinity group is where that impact, like where it hits. Is it at the government level? You'll see some that are on impacted young people. You'll see some that are on programmatic affinities, so it's where that impact touches on, and then the last one is on program or policy focus. We wanted to make sure that there was a balance between that, so that we didn't have all programmatic recommendations or all policy recommendations, but that they were really balanced across all of these.

Then what we did was to organize them into major themes. These themes are across there in gray in your recommendation packet. I'm going to highlight them and go through them. These are just ways to group the recommendations. They are not the recommendations, so I want to be clear on that. When you're voting later, the gray strips are just the organizing principle, not actually the recommendations. Here are the six, really building opportunities at the federal level for meaningful engagement for incarcerated youth and families or formerly incarcerated youth and families.

Expanding opportunities for investments and developmentally appropriate, culturally aligned and healing focus prevention and early intervention. Investing in elevating and researching culturally relevant community-based services as alternatives to detention. I'm going to say that in each of these, we have between two and four recommendations that fall under each. Then the last three themes are enhancing coordination of mental health and substance use services across the entire continuum of justice involved youth. Expanding reentry opportunities for justice involved youth, and building the knowledge and capacity of the workforce that serves this population.

As you can see, and I'm hoping that we have more discussion later after we have a break, is really focusing on how these fall across the continuum that Kristen went through earlier today and that we discussed. If you look at the recommendations, we did try to note in there where we saw them aligning, but it was really nice to see that the recommendations did dovetail very nicely with the continuum overall.

That was pretty quick. I'm going to just forecast what we're going to do and Liz will be going over this more in-depth after we take a break, I think. The afternoon will be spent really prioritizing these recommendations. Again, the recommendations as a whole are coming from the council, but we really want to talk about areas that we're going to be focusing on. What are the top of these 16 priorities? What are the top ones that are really resonating across members of the council?

Considering the balance of the continuum of care, Kristen talked a lot about where sometimes resources are allocated. Where are the gaps and the needs in that continuum to make sure that we're focusing on balancing those programmatic and practice recommendations and then also considering short-term and long-term components? With that, I want to ask if there are any questions or points of clarity. Liz, I'll turn you over to facilitate that.

[01:07:50] Liz Ryan: Thanks, Marcy. If you could stay there just in case there's questions on that. I want to also just clarify for everybody that the purpose of these recommendations in doing this really is to inform recommendations to Congress and to the administration and also the council's work plan. Over the next couple of months the subcommittees will work to refine these recommendations and really develop action steps based on those recommendations.

We want to make sure that, as we're moving forward, we know from your perspective where we want to focus that effort. I do have a couple of questions for all of you because I know this is a lot to soak in. I think all of you have participated in subcommittee conversations or your staff have. A couple of things, one is just on the-- We should be referring to this document here that's got the blue heading, right there.

As you take a look at these categories or what you're calling them, the gray strips, is to think about, are these the right categories? Maybe we can put that slide back up Marcy. See these two.

[01:09:14] Marcy: [unintelligible 01:09:14].

[01:09:15] Liz Ryan: Do these make sense to you? These larger buckets of the categories? I'm just looking around to see if that resonates with everyone. I'm seeing nodding heads. Yes, question.

[01:09:27] Julie: When I was going over this yesterday with my colleague, I think there seems to be some themes that are across the six areas. Mental health is one where I saw one in the first category, but then I think in the third or fourth category as well. It was really difficult to prioritize that based on these major themes because that's definitely a priority area, but which one of the recommendations do you pick?

[01:10:00] Marcy: That came up actually, that came up frequently. I think that the mental needs of youth, Amy had oriented at the beginning of this, just that it has been named, that we are really in a crisis moment. I think that those recommendations came through very clearly through the field in multiple places. We did not pull it out as a separate-- It is actually a separate piece I think, hold on one second. I think it was on-- There we go. Number four is the way we tried to do it, but there are definitely other recommendations that touch on it.

We did try to theme the ones that were directly around mental health and substance use into that fourth category. If it makes sense to move other things under here, we are definitely open to that suggestion.

[01:10:54] Liz Ryan: Sorry, go ahead.

[01:10:56] Marcy: I saw Miranda and then I saw Judge Betancourt.

[01:11:00] Miranda: Thank you. A question of clarity I see the desire to balance between programs, practice, and policy. I've heard it described differently. Can you help me with the distinctions between the two? It doesn't really leap off the page looking at the specific recommendations. If you had a working definition, that would be helpful for us to understand.

[01:11:26] Marcy: Kristen and I invite you because I'm here newly and haven't been here for the entire duration, but I will give my best [chuckles] attempt at answering that question. I would say the programmatic ones are things that are impacting actually program decisions. Whether that is a grant program, bucket area where policies are more regulatory, legislative, executive order directives. Liz, I see you nodding, feel free to add.

[01:12:06] Miranda: Practice.

[01:12:08] Marcy: Oh, I'm putting program and practice together.

[01:12:10] Miranda: Programs and practice together.

[01:12:14] Liz: Another way to think about it too might be that the policy recommendations are things that would take administration, would involve additional steps on the administration or by Congress. Whereas I think the programmatic and practice ones are more geared toward things that all of our federal agencies can do collectively together from an operational standpoint. It might mean more collaboration, this specific space, or that kind of thing. It's generally that, does that answer your question?

[01:12:55] Miranda: Yes, that's very helpful. Thank you.

[01:12:59] Renee: First of all, Marcy, I think we've hit a lot of the issues that I even see as a practitioner. The recommendations are very, very specific as to the issues that I see every day, especially on the bench. Great job with that but I have a question in regards to the full continuum. When you state their full continuum, you're saying that this, let's say policy recommendation is going to encompass the full continuum of care of what we just talked about in regards to the continuum of care for communities that we're incorporating this policy to create it in order to it to address all the difference?

[01:13:36] Marcy: Thank you for that question. What I was reflecting is if you look at the 16 recommendations, at the end of many of them, you'll see italics and it says, prevention, intervention and if you line that up, we do hit most of the pieces on the pie. It is as a whole, not each recommendation going across the entire continuum, but as a whole, the 16 recommendations are hitting across the continuum of care.

[01:14:06] Renee: I guess what I'm asking is, each individual recommendation, shouldn't it just hit the whole continuum of care?

[01:14:14] Marcy: I think some will and some won't, depending on--

[01:14:20] Renee: My other thing is shouldn't we prioritize it? I know that's going to be when we come back from break, but shouldn't we prioritize those to be where we are addressing the full continuum of care? I guess that's--

[01:14:32] Marcy: I think that's a strategy.

[01:14:33] Renee: That's a strategy.

[01:14:34] Marcy: That is a strategy question that I appreciate and I'm seeing an insight of how you're going to use your dots this afternoon.

[laughter]

[01:14:42] Renee: I'm jumping the gun, sorry about that.

[01:14:49] Liz Ryan: Does anyone else have other questions? Do you see these recommendations as hitting the full continuum? Lourdes, go ahead.

[01:14:57] Lourdes: I think you did a great job organizing the themes and organizing the recommendations under the themes. I think the challenge that I'm personally going to have when we do this exercise is that if you look at each of the 16, there's a range in terms of going from some very general to very specific and very concrete. Personally, I always veer towards the concrete and the specific. I just want to throw that out there because I'm not sure what we do with that.

In some ways, I could see some of the specific falling under something that's more broadly worded. I worry about putting my dot on something that's so broadly worded because what does it mean? What does it really mean? I just wanted to put that out there and I think it's something we should consider when we see where all the dots land. Are you saying even pairing about some of them like,--

[01:15:58] Marcy: Say again.

[01:15:59] Lourdes: Pairing them up, in other words, putting them. That's how I saw it. Actually, they're specific general, but you get that specific recommendation and put in that general one, it seems like [unintelligible 01:16:09]

[01:16:09] Marcy: When I saw the list of 100, I was doing cross-referencing.

[01:16:13] Lourdes: [unintelligible 01:16:13] 5, 7, 22, 33 are all basically going to [unintelligible 01:16:22]. Let's pile them up. Then even from there, I just wanted to make sure that there's support. If we are talking about very, again, generally worded that then I feel like if we select those and we need the next steps to really prioritize them [unintelligible 01:16:41].

[01:16:43] Liz Ryan: You're definitely previewing I think where we're going to spend the next couple of months together because you're absolutely right. Some of these are fairly general and we're going to really want to tease out. We may need to do more research in an area I'd like to look at that. We may need to pull out a couple of different action steps out of some of them. I think also to Miranda's point, I think it is going to be helpful to know what's more on the policy, what's the policy piece versus what's a programmatic and or a practice piece. That's going to be super helpful to get that.

I think the way I was envisioning us looking at this was these are buckets. You have these big six buckets and then you have some little smaller ones within them, but that we really need to tease those out in the next steps so that we're getting more concrete. I know some of these are pretty concrete, but some of these are general. I think the idea is to get to very concrete over the next two months so that by the June meeting you all are looking at the full set of recommendations in their final stage and voting on that.

[01:18:04] Lourdes: Can I just add one thing, and this is going back to what the judge was saying in terms of the continuum of care? I think one general thing we should talk about is, are we aiming to present a report that does really reflect the full continuum of care? I guess again, that will come out of choosing the recommendation, seeing when we all put our dots down and we see what we come up with.

That's a decision point. If a lot of the dots are in the prevention area or a lot of the dots are in the placement area, I think that's the time when we have to reflect, is that the kind of report we're going to gear toward, or do we need to take a step back and try to think, we probably need to really hit the whole wheel, if you will?

[01:18:53] Liz Ryan: Thanks, that's helpful anyway. Yes.

[01:18:57] Nataki: Two questions. Wanted to find, if you may, I don't know if I'm going to be getting ahead of the process, but maybe if we can have some thought or discussion around how the report is going to influence what OJJDP is going to present in your budget proposal for FY 25/26, et cetera. How does this part of the process dovetail onto that? Number one.

Then number two, as we are all struggling to find the 3 that we're going to put all of our eggs into for this point, but the other 13 are going to have a lot of utility what's the opportunity to go back to the other ones that are not selected in this first round for continuing investment in a subsequent report or a subsequent action plan or a subsequent proposal for what OJJDP is going to propose for your agency-wide budget?

[01:19:56] Liz Ryan: On the first question, I see this as a collective effort, not just OJJDP. We're one stakeholder along with all of you at the table here. I think when the full report is issued, I think it could have implications for all of our agencies and I'm hoping that we will have found some ways where we see collective action. I'm very excited about that because I see so much synergy here with what's up on the continuum and things that we can work together. I would hopefully envision that we would all be looking at all of our budgets not just OJJDP. On this second question, could you repeat the question? I'm sorry.

[01:20:38] Nataki: [unintelligible 01:20:38]?

[01:20:55] Liz Ryan: The whole idea with the dots is just to get a sense of, it's more of a finger on the pulse of where you all see these recommendations. It doesn't mean we're not going to talk about those 16. I would envision both subcommittees chewing on all 16. It's just to get a sense of where's there the most-

[01:21:20] Marcy: Urgency.

[01:21:21] Liz Ryan: I don't know if you want to add anything, Marcy.

[01:21:24] Marcy: I was going to say urgency, sorry. Urgency and interest.

[silence]

[01:21:35] Liz Ryan: Marcy, I'm thinking that we'll take a 10-minute break. Unless you want to go to the next step here.

[01:21:46] Marcy: I posted these, I didn't talk about them because I knew you were going to talk about them later, but just to the question about what is happening over the next two months, really in the subcommittees, we will be working to refine these, to add clarity to them to actually look at actual steps for the broader ones to actually make them concrete. Then once they're concretized, if there's overlap to address that, so that when we come in June, there is things that are really written in a recommendation form that can be acted upon.

[01:22:25] Liz Ryan: In each of your packets, there is a timeline. The next steps that Marcy has previewed up there. There's a one-pager in your packet that has the timeline. I know it's a pretty ambitious timeline, but we think we can do it and we're excited to work with you on that. [chuckles] Before we break, I also want to mention that we have over 100 people joining us virtually. That's super exciting that there's so much interest in this. Hello, everyone joining us virtually. Why don't we take a 10-minute break? We'll reconvene here at 2:35. Is that right? 2:35, all right, we'll see you back at 2:35.

[pause 01:23:10]

[background conversations]

[01:24:14] Liz Ryan: As we move into this last section, I know there were some questions that came up around the continuum and the recommendations and also the process and the steps for the report. I thought we would just take a little bit of time since we're running early to clarify that. I'm going to invite Kristen Kracke up just to talk about the continuum and the questions around recommendations related to the continuum. If you could just clarify a few things there. Thanks

[01:24:46] Kristen: Thanks, Liz. I wanted to help provide some clarification about the recommendations and how we look at them in the context of the overall continuum. I talked earlier about how the continuum really serves as a framework at multiple levels at the community is the continuum of care, how it interacts directly with youth and families and OJJAP is using it as a framework. If the council uses it as a framework here as you voted to adopt, we are already working across the entire continuum of care now through our federal agencies.

The intention with the recommendations is to take a holistic approach as we look across that continuum of care.

The voting is really to take a pulse on where we see, as Marcy said, the urgency and the priority now, but that is still in the context of that larger continuum that we will continue to reflect on and use as a tool as we assess and identify opportunities. I know there was some question about a strategy. Should we employ a strategy that picks recommendations that cut across the entire continuum? That may be a strategy we want to use.

In addition to that, we will continue to monitor and manage, as a body, how that continuum of care is mapping across our federal programs where we need to allocate our resources, how we can leverage policy and practice to infuse support in areas of the continuum where we see gaps or where we see youth not being able to access the programs in the services in that part of the continuum. Maybe there's policy conflict between the federal departments or maybe there's just a gap in resources, or maybe there is eligibility issues, which is both policy and practice.

I just share that to provide a little extra lens so that we're not making these recommendations outside the context of this larger federal interagency system. Hopefully, that helps.

[01:27:03] Liz Ryan: Does anyone have any other questions about that piece of this? Thank you, Kristen. I want to just go as we head into this next session, just to underscore that this is really the first step in the process here, or the next step in the process here of prioritizing the recommendations that you all have called through and talked about.

These will be put into a report that will go to Congress and the administration, and it will also inform the work plan of the council. I wanted to ask Julie just to talk about what would be contained in the report for a couple of questions that came up on that. Julie, can you just talk about that before we then do the prioritization?

[01:27:56] Julie: Sure. I just wanted to say a few things to clarify for you all the structure that we are tentatively looking at using with the report to Congress. As of right now, we're envisioning three primary sections for that report. The first section, we are intending to be a summary of all of the things that the council has done thus far since our relaunch in October of 2022. We're going to talk about the various meetings that we've had. We're going to talk about the presentations and the information that we've been able to glean, talk a little bit about the subcommittee work and it's pretty much a summary of everything that has happened to bring us to this point in time.

The second section of that report is something that we're envisioning as essentially the council's work plan or the prioritized work plan, I should say. This is going to be telling Congress and the president about the things that we are intending to do right now or over the next year or two, or maybe three depending on how long-range we want to go with the work plan.

I think that's something that we can talk a little bit more about at the subcommittee level. We're going to be looking specifically at the kinds of activities that we can do as a council without additional action from Congress or from the executive branch. As we have our list of prioritized recommendations, one of the things that the subcommittees are going to be doing is trying to figure out within particularly some of those recommendations that are currently more at the general level, how can we break those down into more specific action steps? There could be maybe multiple action steps under each of the recommendations that we have prioritized to focus on initially.

These are all the kinds of things that are going to be laid out in the work plan. I will say as well, that although in the recommendations list that we were looking at earlier, we've done some preliminary categorizing those recommendations as being either policy or practice. I also would argue that I think for some of the more general ones, there could be both aspects. I think once we have those discussions in the subcommittees, we'll be, hopefully, able to tease that out a little bit more.

Some programmatic types of things like maybe we want to do maybe a series of webinars or issue a publication or there could be a whole variety of things along those lines that we might want to look at but then we could also, for example, look at internal agency policies that are not the kinds of things like statute or regulation that are more external that we might be able to change and where we might be able to have an impact. That would perhaps be an example of a more policy-focused thing that would be listed out in our work plan. That's essentially the second piece of the report to Congress.

The third piece would be our actual recommendations. Again, thinking about what we have prioritized with the recommendations that we've been talking about. Where are there are areas that we believe that there is a need for additional congressional action or executive branch action? For example, we've prioritized this specific recommendation, but we believe in order to fully implement it, that additional funding might be needed in this area. That would be an example of somewhere that we would have a recommendation to Congress. In that third section, that also falls under the rubric of the recommendations that we have prioritized.

Those are essentially the three areas that we're looking at having in the report to Congress and we'll be, again, talking more about this in detail at the subcommittee level. Nothing is set in stone right now but I just wanted to give you a sense of how we're envisioning right now that that might look.

[01:32:05] Liz Ryan: Thanks, Julie. I think that will help as we go into this next piece where we're asking you to give us a sense from your agency, your perspective, where you think the urgent action is needed. That will help in terms of guiding where those pieces go into the report. I was going to ask Julie now to just give us some instruction on this next step here.

[01:32:37] Julie: If there are no further comments or questions about the recommendations, then we can go ahead and move into the prioritization phase of the meeting. Did anyone have any final questions?

[01:32:53] Michael Smith: Not a question. I just wanted to share with our colleagues from SAMHSA, HHS. AmeriCorps is mostly in the reentry part of this work, but I also think there's a role that we can play on the mental health side. We're about to launch a youth mental health core with Pinterest and Schultz Foundation.

That's going to target bringing AmeriCorps members in to support youth mental health and then obviously, we work with CDC on the public health AmeriCorps initiative, which currently has 4,000 public health AmeriCorps members that are working in their own communities doing all sorts of works from opioid abuse to mental health. I would love to just offer us as a potential partner in that area.

[01:33:38] Liz Ryan: Thank you so much. That's super helpful. Just as you say that, I was thinking maybe there are also other pieces of this that could be reflected as we're doing that. Like it will help us learn who's doing what in which spaces as we develop these recommendations. Thank you for sharing that. Julie, do you want to share this next step?

[01:34:02] Julie: If we're ready, we are going to go ahead and move into the voting or prioritization part of the agenda. If you all open up your meeting packets, what you should find is that everyone has three colored dots. On those dots are a different color for the federal agency representatives and for the practitioners, I believe maybe one is orange and one is green or yellow, I'm not sure.

Those dots have also been marked with your agency or with your initials if you are a practitioner member. What we're going to invite you to do next you will see at the front of the room over here on to my left and then also over here to my right, we have posted two paper copies of the recommendations list. We are going to invite you to get up as a group to walk over to one or the other of the two boards and assign your three dot stickers to those recommendations that you believe ought to be prioritized in this next phase of the council's work.

Just so that you all are aware, you do not necessarily have to assign one dot to each recommendation. If, for example, there's one recommendation on the list that you would view as particularly salient that you think really needs to be highly prioritized, you are welcome to assign all three of your dots for the same recommendation. You can assign two of them to one recommendation. You can go ahead and split those up any way that you would like.

[01:35:46] ?Calvin: [unintelligible 01:35:46].

[laughter]

[01:35:50] Julie: We did not give everyone a pair of scissors. [laughs]

No dot splitting, although that might be easier. We are going to give you all about 10 minutes to go up and assign your recommendations. I want you to take your time. Don't feel like you need to be rushed. If there's a little bit of a traffic jam up at the boards, please feel free to have some additional discussion with your colleagues as you are voting. When we reach the point where everyone has finished, then we'll call everyone back to order. Any questions about that? [silence] Thank you so much.

[pause 01:36:33]

[background conversations]

[01:42:34] Julie: Did everyone have a chance to assign your dots?

[laughter]

[01:42:41] Julie: If not, please make your way to the board. We'll be starting back up here in just a second.

[pause 01:42:46]

[01:43:04] Liz Ryan: Okay, it looks like everyone has put their dots up. I just have to ask, how was that for all of you to do that? Any comments, thoughts? Go ahead.

[01:43:18] ?Amy: I just wanted more dots.

[01:43:22] Liz Ryan: Yes. What about this side over here? You're good? Were you going to say something, Michael?

[01:43:32] Michael Smith: No, I'm just agreeing with everyone. It was really hard to make a decision on more than, or just three recommendations out of 16, right? We narrowed it down from 100, now we're down to 16, and to go even further, I think what made it harder for me was that term that we used. What's urgent now, and what's the strategy to build towards later?

[01:43:56] Liz Ryan: Yes. Any other thoughts on that? As we look at these, where the dots are, it looks like there's a couple of areas that folks had some energy around. I don't know if anyone wants to comment on those areas as you look at the document.

[01:44:20] Julie: Could you, because some of us are a little nearsighted, [chuckles] maybe you could tell the group where that energy is?

[01:44:28] Liz Ryan: Let me just grab my--

[01:44:30] ?Speaker 1: It looks like number--

[01:44:36] Liz Ryan: Seven and-- Oh, wait. You know what? Let me go up there really quick.

[laughter]

[pause 01:44:43]

[01:44:57] Liz Ryan: Okay. It looks like four, which is work together to address individual and collective historic trauma, promote and ensure funding for community-based culturally and developmentally informed, effective, affordable, and accessible trauma-responsive services for youth and families to keep them out of the justice system. There were four here. Then with seven and eight. Seven is enhance the success of justice involved using their communities and reduce out-of-home placements by improving access to comprehensive, culturally competent supportive services like family counseling, educational support, mental health, substance use.

Eight, create a grant program that provides financial incentives to communities, that successfully keep children and youth out of the detention commitment. 10 had four dots. Make mental health treatment more readily available, accessible, and culturally relevant to justice-involved youth, including approaches that integrate the arts and healing center practices. These other two, number 12 and 13. 12 had three dots. Again, it's just a general. 12 was, encourage and approve state workforce innovation and workforce opportunity act waiver requests, DOL, that incentivize local workforce investment boards to serve justice-system involves youth in their youth programs.

Number 13 had four dots. That is, improve access to post-secondary education and training. Now I'm looking across at both of these together. It looks like seven, in both of them, have a bunch of dots, and also, 11 has dots on this side and there's no dots on this side. There's a few places where there are a lot of dots, and then there's, I think, a couple of places where there's like one dot roughly.

It's looking like if we look at this, well, lots of folks picked four on this side of the room and it wasn't selected on that side of the room. Seven seemed to have dots from both sides, 11 had a lot of dots on that side, and then 12 and 13 on this side.

[pause 01:47:20]

[01:47:35] Liz Ryan: Just as we're looking at that, of these, are there any themes that emerged for you as you look at how people have put their dots up on the wall? Anyone? Thoughts? Yes, Miranda.

[01:47:55] Miranda: [clears throat] I will at least share something that I'm a little surprised by. I'm curious how this did or didn't resonate with folks in terms of urgency. The two recommendations that are about including families and young people with lived experience didn't rise to the top of our urgency level, and that's curious to me. We've had lots of discussion about that, and we all, I think, acknowledge how crucial it is to have those who are impacted by these systems drive the solutions and help improve the systems that exist today.

I'm surprised that that's there, that there was not the energy in those areas. I'm just curious if that is because there is already good progress in those areas. In including people with lived experience within local juvenile justice systems, why perhaps people didn't gravitate towards that. I'm just curious about that one.

[01:49:09] ?Shaina: I agree with that, but I think it's also just the formatting of the recommendation, support and encourage. I don't think we should be supporting and encouraging, I think we should be requiring the justice system to implement this for probation department or anyone-- When the juvenile justice system said it is required, and a requirement. Especially if they're obtaining funding and so forth. For me, it was just the wording, but I agree. It's something that is not only up and coming, but it's shown to be extremely impactful.

Especially with lived experience when a child is in front of you, and you're trying to tell them, "This is what you need to do," but you're a judge. They're not going to trust you. If someone comes in with lived experience, and they sit there and their eyes don't come off of that individual because they can relate to them. I mean, it is extremely impactful. For me, the reason I didn't put my dot there was, I just didn't like the language, because I didn't think it was needed. I think it's much needed.

[01:50:15] Liz Ryan: Thank you. Yes.

[01:50:16] ?Amy: I wonder if we've learned better. So that it became an assumption for many. Now that we've learned the importance of involving persons with lived experience throughout the planning, throughout the implementation, the evaluation. Now that we know that, it's like we can't unlearn it. Maybe for many of us, it was an assumption going in that we didn't have to do something specific about, because now that we know it, we already plan to incorporate it. That would be my justification of why I didn't think about it as a separate need, because I've already understood it. It's an assumption going forward of how to operate.

[01:51:03] Michael: I guess for me, my thought process in terms of that question was, it's hard enough for me as an adult with lived experience to be in these spaces, and have these kind of conversations. Sometimes I worry about how we meaningfully involve young people with lived experience in these kind of conversations, because it could be traumatizing when you relive or discuss those things. I definitely agree, it's really, really important to always have folks involved with live experience at these tables, and I thought we did a great job with at least pulling the 100 recommendations from the field to do just that.

In my mind, to make this more urgent and a priority, it's also, how do we follow up with care when we involved people with lived experience, not just during the meeting, but before and afterwards, to ensure that they're taking care of themselves in a healthy way when discussing these matters?

[01:52:07] Liz Ryan: Thank you.

[01:52:09] Julie: Can I add to that?

[01:52:11] Liz Ryan: Certainly do. Yes.

[01:52:12] Julie: I also supported the second one. I think what's important is that we-- What actually drew me to it was that it involved some oversight. Having, I think the language is, a permanent youth engagement coordinator, because if we don't have that kind of oversight along with the involvement of youth voices and perspective, despite, I totally agree with what Michael said. There are complications there. Things don't happen. I know that that's something that Human Rights Watch has worked on, having that kind of oversight. Somebody involved in making sure that children's rights are respected.

[01:53:05] Liz Ryan: I'll just say, Miranda, I think that what it does is it underscores how hard this exercise was, because I think we all wanted to put dots on everything. Yes. Thank you for raising that. Does anyone else have any other reflections about this or anything you're seeing up on the-- Anything you want to speak to?

[01:53:32] Miranda: I'll just say that one thing I thought about as I tried to pick three things was which things really needed to be a multi-agency effort. I feel like there are some of these things that are more that one agency can do them. That's not what-- What I was thinking about if I have to think about urgency, I was thinking about, "Okay, we're coming together to work on this. So, what are those things we really need to be cross-agency?"

[01:54:04] Liz Ryan: Thank you. Anyone else want to jump in with anything else they want to say? Michael, go ahead.

[01:54:14] Michael: Thank you, Liz. I guess what I would say is, in my thought process for me, I chose 7, 10, and 12. Really, what stuck out in my mind was that urgency. Starting with at least number 12, this last week I've been studying different states and workforce development boards, and what they're prioritizing from my 9:00 to 5:00. In a lot of these state reports, you read about how a lot of states are worried, or a lot of state employees are worried about the work shortage. It's interesting that even states like Georgia, the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice is working with the DJJ Youth in Georgia.

When I saw that, and I see a lot of the work that it's been doing, for example, in Los Angeles. Where organizations are partnering with juvenile halls and ensuring that youth are given workforce readiness supports. I think it's critical to not overlook a population that is talented, and has a lot to offer. Especially if we're concerned, within the next 10 years, we have a worker shortage. For me, 12 was something urgent, as I'm seeing what states across the country are looking at, in terms of filling jobs and employment. Then when I look at 10 as well as 7, both of those recommendations for me are very inclusive.

They're protective. They involve more than just the youth, the family, and community. In my mind, hit the entire continuum. We talk about how this last year we're focusing on mental health and the effects of the pandemic. I think these recommendations urgently require that we focus on the mental health of our youth in the justice systems. We have states across the country, like California, for example, that have instituted in their states, Youth Bill of Rights. These Youth Bill of Rights ensure that every county and location are providing youth, who are in custody, the care they need. Such as mental health and therapy.

We've talked a lot about ACEs and adverse childhood trauma. Something that is not really addressed within the juvenile justice system, is the reason why for me, number 10 and 7 were urgent as well. Just in my mind, again, for me, it was the urgency. The things we've talked about in terms of mental health and with the workforce development, I think are all critical, as long as we ensure that they're being done in a meaningful way with supportive services. That was just my thought process in making these recommendations.

[01:57:15] Liz Ryan: Thank you so much. Anyone else over here? Yes.

[01:57:20] Johnson: Yes, Liz. You asked the question about whether we see any common themes. Let me just share with you. I just really quickly took some notes, so if I got it wrong, blame me, blame it on my mind. I'm getting old here. There are four things here. 4, 7, 10, and 13 have the most votes, by any color. Of those, four is the only prevention activity. The other three are actually involved in justice-involved youth.

One of the things we could say is that we're probably light on prevention, and we're heavier on dealing with kids who have already had contact with the system, and trying to perhaps mediate whatever those risk factors are and address them as they engage and navigate the community. I think that that's great. Of the four, what we see is we see trauma, mental health, education, counseling, and post-secondary education. Those are the things that we're looking at.

One of the things that struck me though, is that for 13 we're talking about community reintegration. For seven, we're talking about community involvement and community-based activities, and for four. What's striking to me is that, again, I'm assuming that it's already embedded in it, but many of the things that we don't necessarily see on the board are already assumed under these, or subsumed under them. That is community development activities that try to provide productive pro-social activities for youth on the prevention side. Also, community development to include housing activities, that provide youth and their families with more opportunities.

Perhaps moving to neighborhoods of opportunity, perhaps moving to neighborhoods with many more like amenities for their kids, so that their kids are doing more the types of things we want all our kids to do. Like play in the playground, be part of Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, or scouting now. [chuckles] Those are the things that we want for our kids. I think those things are actually embedded and subsumed under these, but I also don't want us to lose track that these kids live in communities. That the communities themselves, where they live, put them at risk. Those communities put them at risk.

As we're thinking about this community-based, and community engagement, and community reintegration, that we also think about, what are some of the assets within the communities that we should be leveraging, and what are some of the challenges within those communities that we should pay close attention to?

[02:00:07] Liz Ryan: Thank you so much. Those are really good insights. I like how you were looking at the different recommendations and pulling out the themes, but also noticing areas that we may have assumed things, and we want to make sure that we're not assuming, that we're actually articulating that in the work as we go forward, so thank you so much. That was really helpful. Does anyone-- Yes, please.

[02:00:33] ?Speaker 2: I just want to piggyback off of the last thing Mr. Johnson said, which was about strengths in the communities. That's why Interior selected number three. The local community know best what's for the community, especially from the tribal perspective. At Interior, we're supporting self-determination and sovereignty, and we're really trying to braid our mission with that of tribes and ensure that everything that we do is tribally-led. That tribes are consulted at every single stage of whatever funding or program we put out, whether it's family-focused or transportation. So, that's why Interior picked number three.

Number four, I just from-- Given the context of tribes, the genocide that was perpetrated against Native American communities, Indigenous communities in the United States, there's a level of generational trauma, that when we're talking about trauma-informed, we need to ensure that we're addressing the generational trauma that our tribal youth experience, as well as the current trauma that they experience from the current situations, especially on reservations, that they're dealing with.

One of the things we didn't pick but we had talked about was number eight, which is creating the grant program that provides federal incentives to communities. I just want to note that tribes are really resistant against grants. They're overly burdensome. There's just too much administrative burden for tribes. I come from a very small tribe, where my tribal administrator wears three different hats, and so grant writing is very difficult for her.

Whenever agencies are thinking about creating grant programs, advocating for tribal set-asides is really important. Making sure that the grants process, application process, as well as the administration process, is streamlined as possible, to reduce that administrative burden. This is all encapsulated in the executive order that President Biden signed in December. It's Executive Order 14112, which directs all agencies to look at how they're funding tribes to make it easier for tribes to access that funding. So, thank you.

[02:03:08] ?Shaina: Can I add on to that?

[02:03:08] Liz Ryan: Thank you. Yes.

[02:03:09] ?Shaina: I put my sticker on number three for specifically that reason. It's not one-size-fits-all. We have to look at our local communities and see. One of those things in the local communities is the lack of grant writing or grant resources. For me, if you look at my sheet, which you can all see, I have 1, 10, 4 put together, because-- My main priority was number three, and that we're supporting local communities and identifying what their problem is, and then applying a lot of these other recommendations to that as well.

I also put a dot on number 10, the make mental health treatment more readily available, accessible, and culturally relevant to justice-involved youth. Again, my notes were, but that goes into seven. It doesn't have to be just justice-involved youth. That should be also on the prevention side. I see a lot of cases where children are just placed in detention because they're having a mental health situation. It's not because they're engaging in delinquent behavior, it's because they're aggressive, because they've been triggered. I see that on a daily basis.

What we lack is that mental health treatment that can be readily available, or the education for the parents, but again, it goes back into helping local communities identify the concerns and their individual needs. Then lastly, of course, I was a little biased and I put my last dot on expand investments in training for judicial and law enforcement personnel.

[laughter]

[02:04:44] ?Shaina: I come from the great state of Texas, and I love my state, but unfortunately, not every judge, especially those that handle juvenile cases, think like I do. I think sometimes it is because of a lack of training. It is because of them understanding or even being presented research about trauma-informed. They're sometimes just make decisions based on what information is given to them. Of course, apply the law as always in the Constitution, but more importantly, I think judges should be educated on what the outer concerns are, not just what's within the law or what's presented to them in a case docket.

That's why I put my dot on that one. I think that not so much giving them research, but more training, and them coming to understand that if you're going to preside over juvenile cases, you need to understand the factors as to why these children are before you.

[02:05:38] Liz Ryan: Thank you. [unintelligible 02:05:39].

[02:05:42] ?Speaker 3: Since everyone is sharing what they picked and why, I felt I wanted to-

[02:05:45] ?Participant: It's not anonymous.

[02:05:47] ?Speaker 3: - I wanted to jump in, but it really actually, the criteria I used was exactly what Assistant Attorney General Solomon said earlier before she had to leave. She talked about how most kids, as they grow up, desist from offending behavior. The two things that interrupt that desistance are trauma and incarceration. That's why the ones I picked were number four, which is about really having a interagency approach to addressing trauma in kids' lives. Then number eight, which is about making it a priority, incentivizing, do whatever you can to keep kids out of facilities. Yes, I double-dotted that one. I will admit. [laughs]

[02:06:45] Liz Ryan: Go ahead. Liz, and then Miranda.

[02:06:51] Liz: Yes. I actually, first of all, I want to echo what Calvin spoke about, which I feel is just a better way of talking about how I talked about the importance of safety net, and what some people call transformative justice. Which is making sure that children have what they need in their environment. I also feel like it's important to mention though, that in some ways, the reentry is also the prevention, in the sense that children need access to education, they need access to work opportunities.

These are things that you need when you're leaving the system, but also things that you need that can help you not enter the system in the first place. I think it's important to note that, when we think about balancing between prevention and to be at the beginning, because it's all kind of a circle, just like the continuity of care I think is.

[02:07:48] Liz Ryan: Thank you, Liz. Thank you for those insights. Then Miranda.

[02:07:51] Miranda: Yes. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves. I know there's a lot of work to be done to get more granular and think about this report as a whole. I'm hearing just a lot of commonality in what we're saying. I'm thinking about whether it makes sense to have principles, or threads, or themes that run through all of these recommendations, and highlighting those as a separate exercise from the more granular policy and practice changes. Things like trauma-informed, healing-focused, culturally responsive, engaging meaningfully with lived experience.

Addressing the entire continuum, because all parts of the continuum are important. Not creating additional federal silos, reducing administrative burden, and being community-based or community-led. There are just some things that I think rise above some of these recommendations, that I think we would all say, "Aha, yes." We want to make sure that that's in the thought process, no matter what recommendation that might ultimately be taken up by Congress or the President, or we just want out there for posterity. There are some values or principles that we hold throughout them all, and then we can maybe get into more specifics on the actual recommendations.

[02:09:22] Liz Ryan: I think you've just written the first part of the report.

[laughter]

[02:09:28] Liz Ryan: Thank you so much for pulling out those common themes. That was fabulous. You're absolutely right, that there are these pieces that seem to resonate across, no matter what we're talking about. This is a very wonderful conversation. I don't really want to cut it off, but I want to-- I don't want to keep people beyond the time that we said we would be here. So, anyone else want to share any other perspectives or insights? This has been really great. I'm just looking around the room. I don't want to miss anybody.

Okay. Since we do have a few minutes, and since Miranda did help us take this next step, I just want to ask one further question, which is, of the recommendations that seem to garner the most dots, those were 7, 10, 13, 4, and 5. 7, 10, 13, 4, and 5.

[02:10:37] ?Participant: In that order?

[02:10:38] Liz Ryan: In that order. Then number eight after that. So, 7, 10, 13, 4, 5, and 8. Again, don't feel pressure, but if you have thoughts about strategies that we could tease out, just preliminary thoughts about within any of these recommendations, is there a strategy that you see that's an actionable strategy that you think could be part of how we articulate that in the recommendations going forward?

I think like someone said, "Oh, we could do a regulation on that." Or that's something we would propose a collaboration among the member agencies on, or that's something we could build into a grant program or something like that. Does anyone see anything out of any of these that jump out to you, that you'd like to share with the group?

[pause 02:11:36]

[02:12:12] Liz Ryan: It's okay. I feel like I've just given everyone a big homework assignment. I'm sorry. This is a lot to think about. Maybe this is a preview of what we're going to do over the next couple of months in the subcommittees, is have those kinds of conversations. Looking at this whole document, starting with the ones that seem to garner the most synergy amongst all of you. That will be our task going forward. I want to--

[02:12:45] Johnson: Liz, can I just jump in for a quick sec?

[02:12:46] Liz Ryan: Yes. Yes, please.

[02:12:47] Johnson: Not that I have a recommendation, but one of the things that I think might be important to at least consider--

[02:12:54] ?Participant: Yes, [crosstalk]-

[02:12:54] Johnson: One of the things that might be worth considering is, we often have conversations beyond this table about the various ways that our agencies are using their formula, block grant dollars, right? We might be doing something on, let's just say, supportive housing work, and another agency might be doing something in a very similar space, and another agency might be doing something in the juvenile justice space focusing on the same neighborhood.

One of the things we might want to consider is whether there's an opportunity to offer some type of guidance or best practices around how agencies who are targeting populations where there are overlapping challenges. I would probably hazard a guess that the population you're interested in, that the population we're interested in and already touching, and the population that every agency in here is interested in, we're all touching the same folk.

Coming up with a creative way of, even if regulatory, sub-regulatory guidance is really challenging, is there a best practice guide that we should be using and trying to put before our principals? About discussions around how we get our grant funds talking to each other. Just get our grant funds talking to each other, so that your Byrne JAG grants, or your Byrne grant dollars are talking to our CDBG dollars, and talking to the dollars around community services, whatever block grant money over at HHS, and the other various block grant dollars.

I think that would be a powerful way of at least just thinking about, how when we go about the business of awarding these grants, that we're at least thinking about a whole of government strategy for addressing the challenges that is not just about juvenile justice. It's about juvenile justice, it's about housing, it's about mental health, it's about trauma-informed work, it's about all of those things, and they're happening in the same places.

[02:15:02] Liz Ryan: Thank you. That's a brilliant strategy, and something that sounds like that I see a lot of heads nodding, that we could look at as we're thinking about this going forward. So, thank you so much for that.

[02:15:16] Miranda: I think I just found my new best friend.

[laughter]

[02:15:21] Miranda: The two things that I'm always on the soapbox about, in multiple settings, is that a lot of times when we have these kinds of conversations, we're talking about the same kids, families, and communities. This idea of, in the substance use world, we've come to grips and now have data that show that we're typically talking about polysubstance use as the norm. In this arena, where we're talking about our youth, families, and communities that have multiple risks, and so whatever we can think about to do, where we're talking about getting our research agendas better informed of how we do comprehensive assessments.

So that we begin to see various levels of issues and challenges in the individuals, families, and communities that we are assessing. Our interventions have to be looking at how we provide multiple impacts, and so our funding needs to be more. This is so well beyond the discussion of blended and braided funding, but we still need to have some of those conversations of how we do that in a way that does not diminish our fund, does not look like duplication to GAO, et cetera. We need to talk about blending and braiding our funding and our resources so that our interventions can provide multiple impacts.

Again, on our data side and our research side, we need to be thinking about how we measure those multiple impacts. We know that there are issues that are co-related. When we know we have young people who are unhoused, and then we house them, they begin to show positive impacts in their mental health, in their academics, in their employment, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, but how do we measure that? If the program that is providing them a house, or housing rather, is based out of HUD, but they're seeing multiple impacts, how do we tell that story?

We need to be thinking about how we have more comprehensive assessment, how our interventions can have multiple impacts, how we can tell the story of those multiple impacts, and in a way that allows us to do more innovative funding. I'll put a plug in for my colleague from SAMHSA, that's Rebecca that was here earlier. SAMHSA has a Center for Innovative something. I have to look for it exactly, but they recently sponsored a webinar and a report about blending and braiding funding in substance use services, whether or not that's prevention, intervention, recovery, treatment, et cetera.

That whole concept of, how do you better bring your resources together? I think, cuts across a lot of what we're talking about, because again, my kids who are at risk for substance use, mental health challenges, academic challenges, truancy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, same kids, same families, same communities. That's why you're my new best friend.

[laughter]

[02:18:36] Liz Ryan: I'm glad the council can provide a place to make friendships.

[laughter]

[02:18:41] Liz Ryan: Really, I think this has been a very rich conversation. You've all really put in so much work to get us to this point. So, as we move forward, over the next couple of months, we're going to be going through these recommendations, pulling out some of the strategies, things that you've helped us think about, the opening preamble, I think, Miranda has already scripted for us with the key themes. We'll be doing that, and then when we meet in June, we will be actually approving the final set of recommendations that we're going to put forward collectively. Then over the summer, there will be an effort to write up the actual report.

Also, then in September, we will approve the draft of the report when we meet. Then that report, during the fall, will go through the design process, approval process amongst all the agencies. Then the final report will be distributed in January of 2025. Did I capture that right, Julie? Okay. It sounds like a long time, but it's actually quite an ambitious agenda, and there's going to be a lot to talk about in the subcommittee.

I really want to applaud you all for the effort that you've put in already, and I know there's more to do as we fine-tune this and really tease out some of those actionable steps. To think of it as things that we want to do right now in the report, but also we're going to be laying out a multi-year strategy. As hard as that is to put something first, something second, something third, I think we're going to need to think about sequencing a little bit here, too.

Does anyone have any questions about that timeline? Okay. I think we're going to conclude the council meeting here. I want to thank you all for sticking with it. I know this is a slightly longer meeting, but we wanted to make sure we got all of your thinking around the way to move forward, and your input on where you see these recommendations heading. Thank you so much for being here, and we look forward to seeing you in June, and talking with you, in the meantime, about the work. Thank you.

[02:21:17] Julie: With that, we're officially adjourned. Thank you.

[02:21:19] Members: Thank you.

[silence]

[02:21:28] [END OF AUDIO]