Post-Program Technical Assistance

At the end of the initial Capstone period, there will be an opportunity for teams to receive additional TA to assist them with the continued implementation of their Capstone Project. While technical assistance will be provided throughout the initial Capstone year, this additional engagement could help support:

• Creating a community-led diversion continuum
• Building and sustaining community partnerships, including to promote the development of an array of research-based services and supports to promote youth’s positive development
• Risk-need based decision making, case planning, and service delivery
• Applying principles of adolescent development to juvenile probation practice (general training on adolescent development and TA on use of graduated responses and incentives)
• Strength-based, family- and youth-centered case planning training
• Using a Race/Ethnic Equity and Inclusion lens in probation practice
• Family engagement and partnership
• Data collection, reporting, and performance management
• Transforming organizational culture within probation
• Supervisory training (supervising in a reform environment)
  

Tuition & Application

The Transforming Juvenile Probation Certificate Program will be held on November 4-8, 2019. Through the generous support of the Casey Foundation, participant travel, lodging, meals, on-site activities, conference venue and materials, and one year of distance and on-site consultation and implementation technical assistance is provided at no cost. Teams will be responsible, however, for a contribution of $20,000, which will cover tuition and registration-related costs.

The application period is now closed. In order to apply to the Certificate Program, each team member will be required to create a Submittable account. Once you have created an account, you will be asked to provide your Contact Information, Demographic Information, Biography, and Personal Statement. Additionally, if you have been designated to submit essay responses on behalf of your team, you will be prompted to upload your essay responses via Word document. (Each team is asked to submit just one set of essay responses.) Once you have submitted your application, you should receive an email confirmation within 24 hours. If you do not, please contact us at jjreform@georgetown.edu.

For more information, download the Request for Applications here.

Application Guidelines

A total of seven multi-disciplinary teams will be selected for participation in the Certificate Program. Each team should be comprised of a maximum of eight members and include representatives from the following constituencies:

Required Team Members:

• Core Probation Team
  • Chief Probation Officer
  • Field Probation Supervisor/Deputy
• Judge (presiding or designated by presiding)
• Prosecutor (e.g., District Attorney, County Attorney)

Strongly Recommended Team Members:

• Probation Mid-level/Line Staff
• Community-based Organization Leader (someone who is viewed as a leader among the CBO community and is committed to cross-system collaboration and positive youth development)
• Law Enforcement Official

Other Optional Team Members:

• Public Defender
• County Commissioner/County Manager
• Human Services Leader
• State Agency Representative

The teams selected will represent both geographic and demographic diversity and are expected to have representation from a local jurisdiction. In this regard, state-level teams, whether from a state or locally-run probation system must include a pilot local jurisdiction on their team. Local teams applying from a state-run probation system are expected to have state-level participation and approval for selection. Applicants should note that the Capstone Project is intended to be implemented at the local level, so team composition should reflect the guidance noted above.

While the requirements and recommendations detailed above should guide team composition, the exact composition of the teams will depend on the jurisdiction applying and any significant differences from the guidance provided should be explained clearly within the application. Further, successful applicants will propose teams composed of individuals who hold decision-making authority within their agencies and the ability to influence the successful implementation of the Capstone Project.

Teams should demonstrate most or all of the following characteristics:

• A commitment to system-wide probation transformation.
• A history of juvenile justice reforms and evidence of effective implementation of these reforms.
• A history of successful cross-agency/systems/stakeholder collaboration and reform initiatives.
• Stable organizational structure, leadership, staffing, and funding; a foundation of guiding policies and practices; and the ability to reallocate staffing and other resources in a flexible manner.
• The capacity to collect, analyze, and report data on both system performance and youth outcome measures over time and routinely monitor outcomes to measure change and sustain improvements.
  

Curriculum & Instructors

The Transforming Juvenile Probation Certificate Program is a five-day period of intensive instruction, discussion, and planning for jurisdictions that seek to fundamentally transform their approach to probation in order to significantly improve public safety and outcomes for youth in the juvenile justice system. Participant teams will receive instruction from researchers, policymakers and practitioners, and guidance from CJJR, the CSG Justice Center, and Casey throughout the training to develop and implement a Capstone Project to advance system-wide improvements in their jurisdiction.

The engagement of participating jurisdictions begins with a gap analysis, system mapping and targeted prework and data collection to be completed ahead of the Certificate Program. These activities are aimed at identifying relative strengths and weaknesses across the key domains of juvenile probation practice, and will allow teams to begin to assess their current policies and practices, identify initial goals for system improvement, and enable the fine-tuning of Certificate Program curricula to align with the status of participating jurisdictions.

Specific training modules of the Certificate Program will cover the following topics:

Module 1: A New Vision of Probation: Foundations for Success

• Achieving better outcomes for youth and improving public safety requires a fundamental shift in probation culture and practice. This new vision of probation includes reshaping approaches to focus on promoting youth’s personal growth, positive behavior change and long-term success, including intentionally embracing and incorporating into everyday practice the core principles of fairness and equity, positive youth development, and empowerment of youth, families and communities. This module will include facilitated conversation and identify the key foundational principles that will be addressed in more detail throughout the week.

Module 2: Applying a Fairness and Equity Lens to Probation Practice

• To be effective, probation practice must incorporate an equity lens, beginning with an understanding of implicit bias across race, gender and ethnicity, and inclusive of a focus on institutional and structural racism. It must also implement cultural and gender responsiveness and strategies to identify and reduce disparities through a decision point analysis. The impact of this approach is a more equitable set of system responses, one to which youth are more likely to respond.

Module 3: Youth, Family, and Community Engagement and Empowerment

• In order to truly maximize the potential for community-based services, probation must meaningfully engage youth, families and community partners in core probation practices (e.g., by including teaming, case planning, and credible messenger strategies), as well as in the court process and view them as assets not barriers. Amplifying the voices of youth and families will both improve probation and court practice and promote the importance of procedural justice.

Module 4: Diversion: Right Sizing the System

• In nearly all juvenile justice systems, opportunities exist to expand and improve the use of diversion with the goals of serving youth that are low risk through alternative approaches to formal system involvement and focusing juvenile justice system resources and probation officers’ time on youth that have the highest risk of reoffending. Community-led diversion seeks to provide an exit or “off ramp” from the formal system through multi-disciplinary approaches and partnerships with child-serving partners, incorporation of restorative justice principles, and effective diversion conditions and services.

Module 5: The Probation, Attorney, Court Partnership: Disposition Decisions

• Disposition decisions are central to promoting success for youth involved in the juvenile justice system. Specifically, probation officers, attorneys and judges must work together to incorporate strengths-based opportunities, evidence-based risk and needs and behavioral health/trauma assessments, and youth/family engagement to craft the right disposition for an individual youth. This module will also raise fundamental questions about key decisions that establish the foundation for probation practice, including the purpose of supervision conditions and how decisions are made about the length and intensity of the probationary period.

Module 6: The Role and Practices of Probation Officers

• At the heart of improving outcomes for youth is fundamentally examining the role of the probation officer, and what it means to be an agent of change to support, strengthen, and empower youth. In order to achieve this shift from a “control” probation model to one that features “assistance,” hiring; retention and performance management policies and practices must align with the changing role; training must emphasize relationship building and effective communication with youth and families; probation caseloads and workloads must allow staff the time and flexibility to engage with youth, families and communities; and probation agencies must implement best practices in case planning and management, including a strengths-based graduated responses approach focused on incentivizing positive behavior and goal achievement.

Module 7: Leading Transformation

• Managing the implementation of system-wide transformation requires agencies and leaders who are committed to implementation science and a strategic approach to organizational change. This session will highlight key elements of effective transformation including using research and data to evaluate and inform practice; staff training and targeted communication approaches to facilitate staff and stakeholder buy-in and collaboration; and ongoing efforts to promote sustainability and continuous quality improvement.

Instructors will include (additional instructors to be added):

• Nate Balis, Director, Juvenile Justice Strategy Group, The Annie E. Casey Foundation
• Ana Bermudez, Commissioner, New York City Department of Probation
• Shay Bilchik, Director, Center for Juvenile Justice Reform, Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy
• Stephen Bishop, Senior Associate, Juvenile Justice Strategy Group, The Annie E. Casey Foundation
• Tim Decker, Former Director, Missouri Department of Social Services’ Division of Youth Services and Children’s Division; Founder, Social Innovation Partners
• Scott MacDonald, Consultant, The Annie E. Casey Foundation
• Gina Peralta, Director of Site Management, The Burns Institute
• Mindy Schweitzer Smith, Senior Research Associate, Center for Criminal Justice Research; Deputy Director, University of Cincinnati Corrections Institute
• Mark Soler, Executive Director, Center for Children’s Law and Policy
• Michael Umpierre, Deputy Director, Senior Research Fellow, Center for Juvenile Justice Reform, Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy
• Josh Weber, Deputy Division Director, Corrections and Reentry, Council of State Governments Justice Center