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Endnotes
1 Each community is eligible to receive approximately $1.4 million per program
year. A supplement of $25,000 was available during year 3 to implement
a management information system to support client tracking.
2 Secondary analysis to date has included review of documents such as the
SafeFutures solicitation and sites’ original proposals to OJJDP, OJJDP
guidance for subsequent years and sites’ continuation applications,
workplans and initial strategic plan documents, progress reports, and materials
describing discrete project activities and services. In general, two to
three multiday visits were conducted at each demonstration community during
each of the first 3 years of the initiative. For each visit, two- or three-person
research teams toured the targeted areas, interviewed program managers
and other key actors (such as justice system stakeholders and
SafeFutures service providers), observed project activities, and collected
relevant local documents. After each site visit, evaluators reported the site
visit agenda, together with highlights of the local program’s status and issues.
These findings were disseminated as detailed site-specific memos, intended
to support the formative evaluation interests of OJJDP and the local
collaboratives. Relevant information contained in those documents has been
reworked for inclusion in this Summary.
3 Note that programs receiving funds provided under Title II, Part C of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (JJDP) Act of 1974, as amended (i.e., programs that address at-risk and delinquent girls, family
strengthening, mental health, and serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders)
permit some flexibility. Communities with sufficiently strong programs
in place in any of these component areas could receive permission to
use Part C funds (designated for a particular component) to supplement
other SafeFutures components. All six sites initiated activities in most Part
C components, however. Further, community-based day treatment modeled
after Pennsylvania’s Bethesda Day Treatment Center is an optional component
that none of the sites adopted, although some have introduced other
types of day treatment.
4 In addition to delivering services to a defined target population, SafeFutures
sites are required to conduct planning and implement systems change
throughout their jurisdiction.
5 Unless otherwise noted, the information contained in this section and the
section covering community risk factors was extracted from applications
submitted to OJJDP for first- and second-year funding of SafeFutures demonstrations.
These documents were submitted in spring/summer 1995 and 1997.
6 Formerly the Department of Housing and Human Services.
7 This Summary is not intended to provide an exhaustive review of the literature.
Taken together, the relevant studies often report mixed results and are
frequently challenged as insufficiently rigorous to justify definitive conclusions.
Despite these difficulties, Federal agencies and practitioners—whether part of demonstration programs or not—have tried to apply promising approaches identified by research to improve their own efforts. This information on research, therefore, is included to identify some of the studies that lend support to the various SafeFutures components.
8 On a cautionary note: although afterschool recreation programs can mitigate
risk factors and increase protective factors, it is also possible that close
proximity to other at-risk juveniles will increase risk factors due to contamination,
such as has been shown in some gang interventions (Sherman et al.,
1997). The literature addressing the relative merits of afterschool programs
suggests that specific types of components are crucial to outcomes; regrettably,
there is only limited knowledge of which components are most successful
individually and in combination.
9 The Summit Center, planned prior to the SafeFutures initiative, was conceptualized
as a locked mental health unit for serious, violent, and chronic offenders
in Juvenile Hall. However, in order to receive MediCal funding, the
Center operates as an unlocked facility adjacent to, but independent of, Juvenile
Hall.
10 MHB distributes funds collected through a local property tax to agencies
providing mental health and substance abuse services for adults.
11 Seattle provides mental health services under SSP and also as part of the
Cambodian Girls Group, discussed in the section “Continuum-of-Care
Services for At-Risk and Delinquent Girls”.
12 Because efforts to produce gang-free schools and communities (GFSC) are
closely linked conceptually to the delinquency prevention component and
the serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders component, some sites
used funds from more than one of these to support programs addressing
goals bridging components. This section focuses on the gang-free schools
and communities elements of such programs, where applicable.
Comprehensive Responses to Youth At Risk:
Interim Findings From the SafeFutures Initiative |
OJJDP Summary • November 2000 |
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