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Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on JJIE.org and is reprinted with permission.
Role: Mentor, Status: In Progress
It’s nearing 8:30 p.m. on a Thursday. A gorgeous 4-month-old girl with beautiful brown eyes and cocoa skin is monopolizing my time.
“London is 14 pounds now,” Danielle says. “The doctor says she’s thriving.”
Danielle, the real focus of my visit, is London’s mother and my mentee. Before we were matched nearly eight years ago, I was provided four details: She was 15 years old, lived in a group home, had anger management issues and was an avid reader. I’d taught teenagers, supervised a group home, instructed English to kids with anger management issues and loved to read since childhood. As much as a “soul mate mentee” could exist, Danielle was mine. My goals were to spend quality time with her and help her if I could.
Quality time has been everything from an evening at the movies to catching up while helping her move. Help has ranged from finding her a tutor to securing her a place to live. Through a friend, I found her housing after she returned from a semester of college at her dream school that left her saddled with debt. I felt relief but Danielle was crushed. The facility was a transitional group home and for someone who had clawed her way to Spelman through a rotation of high schools and more than 20 housing situations while in foster care, it felt as if her perseverance had been in vain; like it was punishment for completing her first year of college.
As is her way, she stuck it out and then created a better solution for herself. Danielle’s fierce independence has been one of the most rewarding and frustrating aspects of mentoring her. She often felt counted and tracked but rarely valued. At times, I worried if I contributed to this feeling. There is no roadmap to being a good mentor and although we “matched” in key demographics — black, female, born and raised in South L.A. — our 13-year age difference meant we were in very different stages of life. When I endured my own personal upheavals or transitioned into more demanding and time consuming employment, I remained within reach but did a poor job of initiating contact.
In the interim, Danielle kept inching forward. She did things on her own and alternately took my advice and disregarded it. I would vent my frustration at the latter but most of it was reserved for me. Was there something I could be doing that would make her take my more crucial advice seriously?
Somewhere along the way, I stopped making what she did or did not do a reflection of my mentoring and just loved her for who she was and whoever she was becoming. Today, Danielle is juggling her own apartment, re-enrolling as a junior in college and securing new employment. Between motherhood and a budding parental partnership with the child’s father, she has ventured into a life role that is divorced from my firsthand experience. While she has grown and matured as a young woman, I’ve had to improve as a mentor. I was never a replacement for her parents and learned through trial and error that I couldn’t be.
Being a mentor has made me aware that my role in her life has value but also limits. I am not a martyr, a savior or a caretaker to Danielle. I cannot give her what others owe her (a safe and secure childhood), but I can help her better navigate the life she does have. A purposeful mentor understands this, accepts it and reinforces it.
Yet old habits die hard. As I hold her daughter, I have concerns. How will she navigate being a mother? Like anyone else, she’ll use the cherished and terrifying experience of her own childhood to inform but not dictate her parenting. Danielle has been through hell and back, so she is uniquely qualified to protect her daughter from nightmares that most of us couldn’t even conjure up.
Of course there is much more to Danielle’s story, but it is not my job or my right to tell it. A good mentor understands this most of all. I’m not writing her story. I’m just helping with some of the more critical edits.

The National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP) celebrated the 25th anniversary of Drug Courts with its historic 20th annual training conference in Anaheim, California. NADCP is a national nonprofit founded in 1994 by pioneers from the first twelve Drug Courts in the nation, and the preeminent source for comprehensive training and cutting-edge technical assistance to the entire Drug Court field.
From May 28-31, more than 4,500 justice and treatment professionals from across the globe came to celebrate and participate at the 20th annual training conference. This conference remains the world’s largest that focuses on substance abuse, mental health and criminal justice.
Celebrities in attendance included legendary actor Joaquin Phoenix, All Rise Ambassadors Matthew Perry and Martin Sheen, and Grammy Album of the Year winner Paul Williams.
Whether you were in Anaheim or not, the NADCP invites you to check out program handouts and conference materials, watch videos of the star-studded Opening and Closing ceremonies—including the always gripping Parade of Transformation—and browse thousands of pictures.

Editor's note: this article originally appeared on Rockers In Recovery
Summer is finally here, the grills have all burned off some burgers and dogs, and concert season is in the air. Two synonymous signs of summer are that heat and music both on the rise. Once car windows roll down, and music pours out, it’s time to start the concerts.
Rockers In Recovery(RIR) is kicking off the concert tour season this June 27, 2014 in Aberdeen, Washington, where the RIR East Coast All-Stars, Current Musical Director Lou Esposito (Joe Walsh) will be rockin’ the west coast, in addition to Casey Montana Rogers making her grand debut.
The Director of the band engages the RIR All-Star five-piece band with the help of their Musical Contributors. The Directors then rotate in and out three Musical Contributors on each show based on their availability. This makes for a new experience each time you see the band and NOT JUST THE SAME OLD, SAME OLD.
Unconditional support is paramount in recovery. It isn’t just the addict who is in program, it is the whole family. Addiction hits us all, which is why we all need to celebrate together, because each person is as significant as the other. All of the concerts are free and open to the public because recovery is fun and meant for everyone to understand and share what it is about – unconditional love and support between the recovering addicts and the families and friends.

Below you'll find a selection of the latest grants, jobs, webinars and events posted to our Opportunity Board. Please share the Reclaiming Futures Opportunity Board with your colleagues in the juvenile justice, adolescent substance abuse and teen mental health areas. It's free to browse and post!
Webinars

• PDSA the AAA Method for Change: Rapid Cycle Testing is a Plan Do Study Act Method to Adapt, Adopt or Abandon a Change in Practice: June 24

Events

• 2015 National Mentoring Summit: January 28-30

Grants

• Initiative To Develop and Test Guidelines for Juvenile Drug Courts: Ends June 30
• Support for States’ Juvenile Justice Systems Improvement Projects: Ends July 3

Jobs

• Director of Development, Louisiana Center for Children's Rights

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Baltimore’s Newly Approved Youth Curfew Among Strictest in Nation (JJIE)
  Baltimore’s newly approved youth curfew will provide an effective way to keep kids off the streets late at night, making them less likely to become victims or perpetrators of violence. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said: "I am not willing to gamble on the lives of our children. ... This is about taking them out of harm's way."
  
• Webinar Next Thursday: PDSA - The AAA Method for Change (Reclaiming Futures)
  Next Thursday's webinar will address process improvement when implementing a new evidenced based practice, improving staff retention, engaging meaningful family and youth participation, or improving interagency communications.
• Juvenile Recidivism Measurement Inconsistent Across States (JJIE)
  “You get what you measure. If you’re not measuring something or if you’re unable to measure it, you don't know if your policies, programs and practices are having the intended impact,” said Adam Gelb, director of the Public Safety Performance Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts.
• West Virginia to Study Juvenile Justice System (WTRF.com)
  West Virginia is joining the Pew Charitable Trusts to study its juvenile justice system and find better ways to keep youthful offenders out of detention centers.

Rapid Cycle Testing is a Plan-Do-Study-Act Method to Adapt, Adopt or Abandon a Change in Practice

June 24, 1-2pm PT
Register >>
When implementing change within a System of Care we often discover processes that aren’t working the way we intended them to. With no ill intent, what we do within our system can be ineffectual or even harmful to those that we serve. I believe that we all can agree with the adage that if we continue to do things the way we’ve always done them….we will continue getting the same results.
Next Thursday's webinar is designed to walk you and your system partners through a simple process improvement method that will easily become a part of your agencies/entities quality improvement and quality assurance practices. It can address process improvement when implementing a new evidenced based practice, improving staff retention, engaging meaningful family and youth participation, improving interagency communications and anywhere you discover a need for improvement!
During the webinar time will be set aside for participants to share questions and answers in order to better understand the use of rapid cycle testing within their system of care efforts.
Dr. Edwards Deming, who was trained as a mathematical physicist delivered management trainings, consultation, lectures and writings during the 1940s - 1990s that encouraged the adoption of certain management principles so that organizations can increase quality and simultaneously reduce costs (by reducing waste, duplication, staff turnover, and increase customer loyalty). He described the key to this as being the practice of continual improvement and thinking of what we do as a system, and not as bits and pieces. This method has spread beyond manufacturing to be used within the human service field including medical settings, educational institutions, judicial settings and behavioral health providers. It is useful for any one who wants to improve on what they do in order to achieve the best results.
Borrowing from Deming’s work we use the rapid cycle testing method through the steps of plan, do, study (or check) and act. This simple method is valuable throughout the development, improvement and scaling up or spread of successful processes, practices and interventions.
Register Today >>

Forsyth County’s juvenile drug-treatment court celebrated its first three graduates in April. The Forsyth County juvenile drug-treatment court started in January 2013 and is geared toward nonviolent youths ages 12 to 16 who have substance abuse problems and have been sentenced to probation in juvenile court.
The goal of the program is to give participants a chance at a better life, ultimately reducing recidivism. Juanita Campbell, grandmother of one of the graduates, celebrated the program for this mission:
“I thank God for this program because I don’t want to give him to the streets,” Campbell said. “I don’t want to bury him. I don’t want him to spend 30 years in prison.”
Participants are required to remain in school, perform 25 hours of community service, and are subject to random drug testing. It typically takes nine to 15 months to graduate from the program, with assessments every 90 days to monitor the teens’ progress.
Forsyth County Court works with the local Reclaiming Futures to carry out assessments. Jemi Sneed, project director of Reclaiming Futures, said all participants are assessed to determine what type of substance abuse and other treatment they need, and then directed to the most appropriate treatment.