Reclaiming Futures: Communities Helping Teens Overcome Drugs, Alcohol and Crime: Santa Cruz County, Calif.

The Foundation's program, Reclaiming Futures: Communities Helping Teens Overcome Drugs, Alcohol, and Crime, was designed to: (1) develop new service delivery models that integrate comprehensive services into the juvenile justice system and promote the creation of community-based systems of care for substance-abusing youthful offenders; and (2) foster the development of local judicial leadership to guide juvenile justice and substance abuse treatment partnerships, and assist community-based treatment providers in assessing their effectiveness.The Santa Cruz County juvenile justice system has won national praise over the past decade for its commitment to innovation in addressing areas of detention reform, disproportionate minority representation, and integrated services delivery. The purpose of this project is to address is the high rate of recidivism among substance-abusing juvenile offenders in Santa Cruz County. To address these needs, Juntos Para el Futuro will: (1) establish a structure and process for community involvement, project governance, review of information, and development of new policies; (2) gather and analyze data and community information regarding substance-abusing youth and their experience in the local juvenile justice system; (3) establish and promote a detailed plan for system reform based on the balanced and restorative justice model and research-based principles of adolescent substance abuse treatment; and (4) design, pilot, and expand a model of comprehensive, community-linked substance abuse treatment in the juvenile justice system.

Grant Details

Amount Awarded $1,000,000.00

Awarded on: 2/27/2003

Time frame: 3/1/2003 - 4/30/2007

Grant Number: 47643