Blog: Reclaiming Futures

A couple days ago, we posted six tips on engaging family members in your efforts to reform the juvenile justice system and how it works with teens with drug and alcohol problems. Grace Bauer, who authored the tips, wrote to say that some excellent additional resources are coming:

L.J. Hernandez is a Program Specialist in the Reclaiming Futures National Program Office, and she has a message just for the Reclaiming Futures sites:
Home to Mardi Gras and a melting pot of cultures, New Orleans is the site for the 2009 Reclaiming Futures Leadership Institute, April 28-May 1, 2009. The theme of this year’s Leadership Institute (which is exclusively for Reclaiming Futures sites) is “From Demonstration to Movement: Charting Our Course.” We’re very excited about this meeting because it will be the largest one that Reclaiming Futures has ever held.

• Want a quick orientation to Reclaiming Futures?
• Work for a Reclaiming Futures initiative, and wonder how to do an "elevator speech" about it? 

Check out Dr. Laura Nissen, National Director of Reclaiming Futures, in this brief, 4-minute interview on Comcast Newsmakers. It aired in a break on Comcast's CNN Headline News in late December.

Reclaiming Futures focuses on teens with alcohol and drug problems who are in trouble with the law. A key component of our approach is to integrate the existing systems that work with youth, which can mean working on an even broader array of youth issues.
One Reclaiming Futures site that's done that very well? Anchorage, Alaska. Over the past two years, the Anchorage site worked to bring together all of the local coalitions working on youth issues into one effort, called Anchorage United for Youth, organizing around three common goals:

Even though it was a holiday week, I ran across a number of interesting stories and resources.

• First, The Kaiser Family Foundation published a fascinating (and depressing) summary of projected budget shortfalls in all 50 states. This impact is already being felt in juvenile justice, as you can see in this article from Youth Today.

Hazel Cameron -- a Reclaiming Futures Community Fellow -- knows a thing or two about recruiting mentors for youth involved in the justice system.
Her 4C Coalition has partnered with the Reclaiming Futures initiative in Seattle for years now, successfully pairing youth with caring adults.
The Coalition just made a splash in the Seattle Times, too. (You can also find a PDF of the story here.) Congratulations to Hazel and all her colleagues!
UPDATE: The 4C Coalition recently joined the National CARES Mentoring Movement, which states that it has "mounted the largest mentor recruitment effort in the history of this nation aimed at securing the lives of our young black boys and girls." CARES has mentor-recruitment circles in 53 communities across the country, including several other Reclaiming Futures sites: Anchorage, Chicago, Dayton, and Greensboro (Guilford County). Is your community part of the movement?

Physicians and Lawyers for National Drug Policy (PLNDP) has partnered with the National Judicial College to create Alcohol and Other Drug Problems: a Public Health and Public Safety Priority, A Resource Guide for the Justice System on Evidence-Based Approaches. (Order free copies for yourself and your team; download the PDF; or access it on the web.)

Dennis Reilly, Project Director of the Reclaiming Futures initiative in Nassau County, New York, writes:
On November 14, 2008, the Nassau County Reclaiming Futures site hosted a full-day site visit for Reclaiming Futures National Program Office leaders Laura Burney Nissen, Jim Carlton, and Reclaiming Futures Anchorage coach Tom Begich. We were very pleased with the results of this meeting, and thought we should share our planning process and site visit preparations with other sites.
 
(Shown here are the Honorable John G. Marks, who presides over the Nassau County Juvenile Treatment Court, and Warren Graham, who directs the  juvenile treatment court and co-directs the local Reclaiming Futures initiatve. Click on the image to enlarge it and see what they're holding.)