Jefferson County Community Partnership (Birmingham, AL)
Problems addressed
Effectiveness

Promising

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Promising

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Life periods served
Where the program was applied
Country of application
Description

This is a program consisting of actions developed by the mental health and social assistance network to monitor adolescents with serious emotional disorders. The objective is to reduce the contact of this population with the juvenile justice system.
The services are community-based and include the adolescents’ families in treatment planning and implementation.
The program is based on three basic tenets:
1) It is family-driven and youth-oriented, and the services are accessed while taking their needs into account;
2) It is community-based, with access to the network of formal and informal services in the community where the adolescents and their families live;
3) It considers the cultural, racial, ethnic, and linguistic composition of the target populations to ensure access to and use of appropriate services.

Impact evaluations

An impact evaluation revealed that the adolescents who participated in the program were less likely to enter the juvenile justice system compared to adolescents who did not participate in the intervention [1].

Bibliographic reference

[1] Matthews, S. K., Krivelyova, A., Stephens, R. L. & Bilchik, S. (2013). Juvenile Justice Contact of Youth in Systems of Care. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 24(2), 143–165. https://doi.org/10.1177/0887403411422409

Information source