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Southeastern Kentucky - News Detail
About Us | Our Team | News | Media May 9, 2007 Reclaiming Futures Model Improves Juvenile Justice Services in Southeastern Kentucky Frankfort, Ky. (May 9, 2007) – In a presentation before the House Bill 843 Commission, national experts, Kentucky-area practitioners and leaders agreed that a new approach called Reclaiming Futures has improved juvenile justice services in Southeastern Kentucky. "In the past five years, Southeastern Kentucky and nine other communities have pioneered a new national standard in juvenile justice," said Emmitt "Hayes, a member of the national advisory committee of Reclaiming Futures. "In doing so, these communities are showing the rest of the country how teens can escape a cycle of drugs, alcohol and crime." An initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), Reclaiming Futures in partnership with Kentucky River Community Care, Inc., (KRCC) combines system reform, treatment improvement and community engagement to help teenagers in the justice system get off drugs and alcohol. Research shows that teens that use drugs and alcohol are more likely to end up in the justice system, where treatment services are often unavailable or uncoordinated. "Both national and local data tell us that in Kentucky and elsewhere Reclaiming Futures is working," said Hayes. He told the legislators that Kentucky and the other Reclaiming Futures sites have reported significant improvements in the quality of juvenile justice and substance abuse treatment services, according to a recent evaluation by the Urban Institute and the University of Chicago's Chapin Hall Center for Children. Key elements of the Reclaiming Futures model include screening and assessing teens for drug and alcohol problems and assembling a team to develop a strength-based care plan; training drug and alcohol treatment providers in evidence-based practices that work with teens; and involving community members as natural helpers and role models to provide the support teens need. "We're saving lives and money by getting kids involved in treatment instead of seeing them go further into the court system," said Michelle Kilgore, KRCC's project director. "We have also seen that the Reclaiming Futures youth are less likely to re-offend and more likely to receive the services they need, therefore affording them a better future."
"It is our hope that one day Kentucky will offer the Reclaiming Futures approach to all of our young people with drug and alcohol problems who are in trouble with the law," Dr. Louise Howell, executive director of Kentucky River Community Care, told the Commission. House Bill 843 Commission members also heard first-hand from the Honorable Ralph E. McClanahan, II, Chief Regional Judge of the Bluegrass Region, and Pam Pilgrim, Community Fellow for Reclaiming Futures in the Mountains of Kentucky. Pilgrim spoke of the change towards more positive attitudes that members in her community are having towards troubled youth since Reclaiming Futures began their community awareness and involvement movements. Reclaiming Futures Model Improves Juvenile Justice Services in Southeastern Kentucky The 10 communities piloting the $21 million Reclaiming Futures initiative include Anchorage, Alaska.; Santa Cruz, Calif.; Chicago, Ill.; four counties in Southeastern Kentucky; Marquette, Mich.; the state of New Hampshire; the Sovereign Tribal Nation of Sicangu Lakota in Rosebud, South Dakota; Dayton, Ohio; Portland, Ore.; and Seattle, Wash. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recently approved funding to support Reclaiming Futures in Kentucky for two more years as part of a national expansion of the Reclaiming Futures initiative, citing the program's success in getting more services to substance using teens in the juvenile justice. The goal of the expanded effort is to create a national movement promoting the Reclaiming Futures standards of care in juvenile justice. ### About Reclaiming Futures About the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation |
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