Santa Cruz, CA - News Detail

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Gives Santa Cruz County $250,000 to Help Troubled Youth

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. - The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation today awarded the Santa Cruz County Probation Department a $250,000 grant to improve substance abuse treatment and other services for young people in trouble with the law.

"America's juvenile justice system faces a public health crisis," says Laura Burney Nissen, Ph.D., director of Reclaiming Futures, a national program of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "As many as four out of five of the two million young people who enter the justice system each year have an alcohol or drug problem. Even though research shows that treating alcohol and drug abuse reduces crime, saves money, and builds stronger communities, the vast majority of young offenders receives no treatment at all."

"We want to change this," says Nissen. "The grants we are awarding today will create model programs in Santa Cruz County and elsewhere in the United States to show how we can reinvent treatment, judicial and social services to meet this urgent need."

Santa Cruz County's project, called Juntos Para el Futuro, (Together for the Future), proposes to serve 150 young people with substance abuse problems annually, including 50 in residential treatment, beginning in 2003. The grant is one of 11 totaling $2.59 million awarded to communities nationwide for new treatment and other services for delinquent youth.

"The need for Juntos Para el Futuro is clear," says John Rhoads, chief probation officer of Santa Cruz County. "We know that kids who abuse alcohol and drugs are more likely to behave violently, break the law, or end up in court. We also know that alcohol and drug abuse is a major health problem among juvenile offenders in Santa Cruz County."

According to a local study in 2000, 45 percent of Santa Cruz County's juvenile cases were substance use related offenses and 67 percent of the young people involved had an alcohol or drug problem. Another local study in 1999 of high-risk offenders found that local youth heavily involved with alcohol and drugs were five times more likely to break the law again within six months.

"Santa Cruz County has worked hard to develop a rich continuum of drug and alcohol services for kids in the juvenile justice system," says Rhoads. "Even so, drug and alcohol abuse keeps too many of our kids recycling through the system. This grant will allow us to coordinate and utilize these services more effectively to intervene in the cycle and give these kids a another chance."

"This grant will help Santa Cruz County break the costly cycle of substance abuse and delinquency," says John Salazar, presiding juvenile court judge of the Santa Cruz County Superior Court. "We need to reclaim, not throw away, the lives of these young people. We are thrilled to have the support of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to help us accomplish this."

Santa Cruz County's Probation Department was one of 280 applicants. Over the next five years, Juntos Para el Futuro proposes to create new treatment services based on the principles of balanced and restorative justice, change local policies to support this approach, and provide local decision-makers with data about results of the new system.

Beginning this month, juvenile court judges and officers, law enforcement officials, treatment professionals, and civic, youth and family leaders in Santa Cruz County and the 10 other communities will spend a year planning the new programs. In four following years, communities can ask for up to $250,000 annually to implement the plans.

Reclaiming Futures officials say judicial leadership will play a critical part in these efforts and local judges in each community will participate in a two-year fellowship. John Steven Salazar, Presiding Juvenile Court Judge of the Santa Cruz County Superior Court, will represent Santa Cruz County in the national program.

Reclaiming Futures is a five-year $21 million initiative of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation based at the Graduate School of Social Work at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation was established as a national philanthropy in 1972 and today is the largest U.S. foundation devoted to health and health care. To learn about its mission and work, see www.rwjf.org.