Call for Applicants: Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program
The US Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of Justice Programs (OJP) and Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) are seeking applications for funding for the Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program. The program is designed to increase public safety and improve access to effective treatment for people with mental illnesses involved with the criminal justice system by facilitating collaboration among the criminal justice, juvenile justice, mental health treatment and substance abuse systems. Each grantee is given the opportunity to tailor their programming to respond best to the particular needs of their community.
The BJA welcomes applications from local and state governments, federally recognized Indian tribes, and tribal organizations. Applicants must demonstrate that both a government agency responsible for criminal or juvenile justice activities and a mental health provider will administer the proposed project.
Applications are due by 11:59 pm ET on March 25, 2013. Apply here!
Overcoming Hurdles To Using Research in Juvenile Justice Grant Proposals
While there is a strong push for state and local juvenile justice practitioners to incorporate research into their grant proposals, many practitioners have a difficult time locating relevant evaluation studies and applying them to a specific program or policy. In many situations, an evaluation of the exact program plan implemented in the same setting with the same target population is simply not available. In addition, many high-quality juvenile justice evaluations are published in academic journals. Access to these journals can be cost-prohibitive, creating an additional barrier to the use of this research in real-world settings.
Despite these hurdles, it is almost always possible to work research and evaluation into a grant proposal. There is a substantial amount of juvenile justice-related research that is free and accessible from federal agencies such as the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) and the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS); non-profit organizations such as the National Center for Juvenile Justice (NCJJ); and state agencies such as Statistical Analysis Centers and departments of juvenile justice. Studies relevant to some aspect of your program can be used to provide grounding for your plan of action and support the likelihood that your program or policy will be a success, even if the research does not evaluate the exact policy or program plan you intend to implement.
Relevant research can be used to support the selection of program activities, the degree of change you expect to observe, the amount of time it will take for program activities to affect program youth, and the measures you will use to collect program data. It is also possible (and important!) to incorporate findings from the field for a program that is not yet considered an evidence-based practice, in order to explain and justify program logic.
Reclaiming Futures Receives $6.15 Million to Expand in Nine New Communities
On December 10, 2012, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety announced new investments in a public-private partnership with the Duke Endowment and the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust to reform the state's juvenile justice system. Together the foundations are contributing $888,000 to bring Reclaiming Futures to six additional communities in North Carolina.
On December 11, 2012, Reclaiming Futures announced a $5.27 million award from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to improve drug and alcohol treatment for teens in trouble with the law in the following communities:
- Lucas County, Ohio
- Forsyth County, N.C.
- Duval County, Fla.
The funding will also provide training and technical assistance for the existing six federally-funded Reclaiming Futures sites in addition to these three new communities.
Reclaiming Futures brings together judges, probation officers, treatment providers, families and community members to focus on three common goals for teens: more treatment, better treatment and community connections beyond treatment, in 37 sites across 18 states.
Wisconsin Seeking Juvenile Justice Reform Recommendations
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's Juvenile Justice Commission is seeking concept papers for evidence-based and collaborative initiatives that will improve their local juvenile justice systems. Specifically, their funding priorities are:
- Juvenile justice system improvement in the area of disproportionate minority contact
- Juvenile justice system improvement in the area of maintaining compliance with the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act
- Juvenile justice system improvement by enhancing capacity-building at the state and local levels
- Juvenile justice system improvement in the area of data collections/information-sharing at the state and local levels
Examples of initiatives that may be funded include:
OJJDP Seeking Peer Reviewers
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is seeking juvenile justice experts to serve as peer reviewers for its 2013 grant applications.
From JuvJust:
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) invites practitioners with expertise in juvenile mentoring programs, youth-focused policing, and the implementation and evaluation of tribal youth initiatives to apply to serve as peer reviewers for its fiscal year 2013 discretionary grant applications.
To apply, e-mail a current résumé or curriculum vitae to OJJDPConsultantPool@usdoj.gov by November 30, 2012. Note your areas of expertise in the message body. OJJDP will compensate peer reviewers for their time and effort. OJJDP anticipates using these peer reviewers in March/April 2013.
Peer reviewers have at least 2 weeks to evaluate and rate a set number of applications and to submit their assessments electronically in the Office of Justice Programs’ Grants Management System. OJJDP will conduct a conference call in which a panel of at least three reviewers reach consensus on the merits and shortcomings of each application. OJJDP is committed to ensuring a fair and open process for awarding grants. Peer reviews, which provide an independent assessment of applications, play an important advisory role to that end.
Peer reviewers must comply with the OJP conflict of interest rules and regulations. For example, a peer reviewer cannot have a financial relationship with an organization that submitted an application under the solicitation being peer reviewed.
Most Popular Juvenile Justice Blog Posts of August
We realize that many of our readers spent at least part of August traveling and spending time away from the computer. So, we've put together a little recap of our most popular juvenile justice blog posts of August 2012.
10. A Look Back on 11 Years of Juvenile Justice Reform
Earlier this summer, the National Conference of State Legislatures published a report detailing the progress made in the juvenile justice arena at the state and national levels.
9. Funding Opportunity: Improve Outcomes for Boys of Color
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced a new call for proposals for 10 grants of up to $500,000 each. The Forward Promise initiative is looking for innovative, community-based projects working to strengthen health, education and employment outcomes for middle school and high school-aged boys and young men of color.
Soros Justice Fellowships: Apply Now
Those working to advance reform and spur debates on juvenile justice issues listen up: The Open Society Foundations are looking for Justice Fellows working on the following issues:
- Promoting just and effective sentencing practices
- Combating the criminalization of marginalized populations, eg. people with mental illness, homeless individuals, young people
- Ending the prosecution, sentencing and incarceration of children as adults
- Promoting new approaches to drug policy
- Reducing unnecessary pretrial detention
Fellows receive funding through the following two categories:
Funding Opportunity: Improve Outcomes for Boys of Color
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation just announced a new call for proposals for 10 grants of up to $500,000 each. The Forward Promise initiative is looking for innovative, community-based projects working to strengthen health, education and employment outcomes for middle school and high school-aged boys and young men of color. The projects should have preliminary evidence of impact in the following areas:
- Alternative approaches to harsh school discipline that do not push students out of school;
- Solutions that focus on dropout prevention and increasing middle school retention and high school graduation rates;
- Mental health interventions that tailor approaches to boys and young men who have experienced and/or been exposed to violence and trauma; and
- Career training programs that blend workforce and education emphases to ensure that students are college-and career-ready.
From the RFP:
How to Find a Foundation to Support Your Cause
Lots of people, especially those starting up a new youth program, ask us how to find funding. Here's a list of ways to get started!
Before youth-serving organizations apply for funding, they have to pinpoint likely donors. How to do that with no fund raising staff and barely enough time to get your to-do list done each day?
We turned to Helen Brown, president of The Helen Brown Group, a Boston-area consulting company specializing in fundraising research, and to NCFY’s own youth policy researchers. They had the following tips for readers setting out to identify promising foundations:
- Be focused. Be clear about your specific financial needs and identify programs that are most likely to be fundable (based on their success rates, the unique populations they serve, and so forth). Don’t chase after funds that take you away from your core mission (for instance, providing emergency shelter when your mission is to teach nutrition). But do think outside the box a bit—if you run a basketball program, could you use a grant for computers or for training volunteers?
- Consult your board. Talk to your board and find out if they have any connections with foundation funders, even if that foundation’s guidelines don’t match the type of program you seek to fund. “You may discover hidden funding sources or a chance to speak with a foundation officer,” Brown says.
$1.29 Million National Evaluation to Examine Juvenile Drug Courts Implementing Reclaiming Futures
New federal dollars will pay for a $1.29 million, multi-year evaluation in six juvenile drug courts implementing Reclaiming Futures, a national program that improves drug and alcohol treatment for teens in trouble with the law. This evaluation, the first of its kind, will examine the impact, processes and cost-effectiveness of Juvenile Drug Courts implementing the Reclaiming Futures model. Funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention through an interagency agreement with the Library of Congress, this evaluation will be conducted by the University of Arizona's Southwest Institute for Research on Women (SIROW).
"We know from a 2006 evaluation by the Urban Institute that Reclaiming Futures improves the lives of young people by changing the juvenile justice system for the better," says Susan Richardson, national executive director of Reclaiming Futures. "This new research will look at specific outcomes, such as recidivism, relapse rates, and costs."
