Do you want to learn how the Reclaiming Futures model is uniting juvenile courts, probation, adolescent substance abuse treatment, and the community for cost effective juvenile justice reform?

Please register for a free webinar on Tuesday, April 30 at 10 a.m. (PDT)/1 p.m. (EDT)

What you'll learn:

• Communities have a compelling need to break the cycle of drugs, alchohol and crime 
• Reclaiming Futures is connecting young people to caring adults 
• The six-step model is pointing to better outcomes for youth

About the presenters:

In 2012, 8 million children were living in high-poverty communities—a 25 percent increase since 2000, reported a data snapshot (PDF) from the Annie E. Casey Foundation's KIDS COUNT data center.

Areas of concentrated poverty are census tracts in which 30 percent or more residents live below the poverty threshold ($22,314 per year for a family of four). Research shows that even when family income is held constant, living in these communities holds serious consequences:

• Families are more likely to face food hardship, have trouble paying their housing costs, and lack health insurance.
• Children are more likely to experience harmful levels of stress and severe behavioral and emotional problems, as well as drop out of school and fall down the income ladder as an adult.

The amount of children living in these neighborhoods is on the rise, up 1.6 million since 2000. Some states have experienced explosive growth in the proportion of kids in concentrated poverty over this period, including Alaska: 400 percent increase, Colorado: 360 percent increase, Oregon: 200 percent increase, and North Carolina: 179 percent increase.

These sobering numbers prompt us to consider: how are our communities addressing poverty, and what can we do to help? As the data shows, poverty in a community has clear consequences for our youth. Given the connection, with creative thinking, we can improve the outlooks of both.

Thanks to the teamwork of Hocking County Reclaiming Futures, many teens in Southeast Ohio are receiving the support they need to break the cycle of drugs, alcohol and crime.

Learn how this team creates healthy activities for young people. In a story, published by the Logan Daily News on April 1, they:

• Hiked trails with a soil & water conservation education specialist,
• Created art from recycled and reclaimed items, and 
• Learned to identify trees and shrubs in the Hocking Hills

Reclaiming Futures teens are learning to give back too. By donating art objects for programming at the Bishop Educational Gardens, they are creating goodwill in the community. 

Kudos to Hocking County Reclaiming Futures for building educational partnerships for court-involved young people. Together, they are connecting teens to positive activities and caring adults.

A recent NPR story explores the new relationship between Goldman Sachs and teens in the New York City prison system. Via the story:

In the New York City prison system, the outlook for juvenile offenders is bleak. They're falling through the cracks, being arrested repeatedly, and being re-released onto the same streets only to be picked up again.

The criminal justice system is failing these 16- and 17-year-olds, says Dora Schriro, the commissioners of the city's Department of Corrections.

"Just about half of them are going to return to jail in less than a year of their release from our system," she says. "And so that means right now one out of two is failing. They're being rearrested, charged with new crimes, and coming back."

So last year, the New York City Department of Corrections did something no other city in America has ever done — it asked for private, corporate investors. Goldman Sachs opted to invest $9.6 million in the Adolescent Behavioral Learning Experience program, a new curriculum that seeks to bring down the number of youth offenders going back to prison.