Paws for a Cause; News Roundup

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Mentoring Program for At-Risk Youth to Begin in Scott County, Missouri (seMissourian.com)
  A new program will pair mentors with at-risk children in four area counties. Building Understanding; Developing Success, or BUDS for short, is a recently developed mentoring program funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. The program will place volunteers 21 years old or older with at-risk children and teenagers ages 9 to 17.
• Paws for a Cause (Rankinledger.com)
  Rehabilitation is two-fold at Rankin County Mississippi Juvenile Justice Center where both dogs and juveniles leave the center ready for the world. The Rankin County Sheriff Department’s Paws for a Cause is a partnership between the county’s animal shelter and juvenile justice center. It’s a way to rehabilitate both the juveniles and the dogs. Since it began about a year ago, Sergeant Ken Sullivan said pet lovers have adopted about 22 dogs from the program.
• Local Television Piece Features Innovative Baby Elmo Program for Young Fathers at an Ohio Juvenile Correctional Facility (VERA.org)
  A recent piece on ABC News Channel 5 in Cleveland, Ohio, highlighted the Baby Elmo Program for young fathers at the Cuyahoga Hills Juvenile Correctional Facility. The program, which was designed by researchers at Georgetown University, develops the relationships between incarcerated teen fathers and their babies through intensive experiential learning.

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Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment and Mental Health

• Twin Cities First Aid Classes Teach Mental Health Techniques (StarTribune.com)
  It took a rolled-up piece of paper to explain just how crippling mental illness can be. Taking a paper tube, one of the students gathered at the Chanhassen Library last Monday morning leaned toward her neighbor and began whispering in one ear. “Don’t trust her — you can’t trust anyone.” At the same time, another participant tried to conduct a conversation with the person in the middle. It turned out to be almost impossible.
• Evan Roskos Takes on Mental Health in Teens (TheGazette.com)
  "Evan Roskos’s 'Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets' (Houghton Mifflin, 2013) is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. It’s about a 16-year-old boy named James who hugs trees, chitters at squirrels, recites Walt Whitman and talks to an imaginary pigeon therapist named Dr. Bird. James is trying to unravel the mystery of why his older sister Jorie was kicked out of the house and out of school just a few months before she was supposed to graduate."
• Ohio to Grant $3 Million to At-Risk Youth Services (SeattlePI.com)
  Ohio will direct $3 million in federal funds this year to community projects aimed at helping young people at risk of harming themselves or others because of a mental illness or developmental disability, state officials said Monday.

David Backes writes the Friday news roundup for Reclaiming Futures and contributes articles about juvenile justice reform and adolescent substance abuse treatment to ReclaimingFutures.org. He has a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Santa Clara University. David works as an account executive for Prichard Communications.