This guide offers strategies for planning, designing, implementing, and sustaining interventions to reduce juvenile justice contact among young people and families. Drawing on, research and findings from case studies of assessment centers in Idaho and juvenile hearing boards in Rhode Island, the guide offers strategies in three phases: understanding your community’s needs, assets, and gaps (phase 1), designing the intervention (phase 2), and implementing the intervention with sustainability in mind (phase 3).
Who Is This Guide For?
This guide is designed for interagency teams, state advisory boards, and developers of youth interventions to reduce justice system involvement, including grassroots community organizations, nonprofits, and government agencies. it provides actionable steps for juvenile justice interest holders seeking to design and implement interventions to reduce juvenile justice contact among young people. Consultants, researchers, and other interest holders will also find information in the guide useful for research, practice, and technical assistance.
What This Guide Offers
There are many steps between identifying an issue in the community, deciding to adopt a new approach, implementing that approach, and sustaining the intervention long term. This guide is designed with an integrated, continuous approach in mind. It aims to provide developers of interventions and other interest holders with the research, tools, resources, and information needed to design, implement, and sustain a successful intervention. The unfortunate reality is that many interventions die at implementation. This can owe to a variety of factors, such as a lack of resources and community-buy in or a poorly designed theory of change. We provide recommendations and resources to encourage successful and sustainable interventions for young people and families. For example, taking the time on the front end to understand the community’s needs, gaps, and assets ensures an intervention will be complementary, important because adopting duplicative services can cause tension over scarce resources.
We also provide recommendations for engaging with the community at every phase, from understanding needs to sustainability. Engaging with those who will be affected by the intervention, especially young people and their families, is essential to building community buy-in, avoiding potential pitfalls, and ensuring the intervention is truly reflective of the community. These steps help prevent potential implementation gaps and increase the likelihood that the intervention will be successfully adopted in the long term while maximizing potential positive impacts on communities and families.
