Juvenile Crime
Cape Girardeau Community Caring Council
Core Result: Children and families safe
Benchmark: Juvenile law violations
February 2002
Objective
To decrease the rate of juvenile law violations, ages 10 – 17, in Cape Girardeau County from 91.6 per 1000 in 1998 to 85 per 1000 by 2004
Strategies
Moving services closer to families and children:
Partnering with the county Division of Family Services (DFS) office and the local school district has brought DFS social workers into the neighborhoods and schools. The preventive efforts help to avoid a much greater incidence of out-of-home placements and juvenile law violations. The social workers conduct many home visits to help identify and meet needs of the family that otherwise would go unmet and lead to other compounding problems. This strategy requires no Caring Communities funding.
Partnering in the community:
The Inter-Agency Staffing Team (IAST) is a team formed by the partnership many years ago, with 13 agencies represented. The agencies meet twice monthly to staff and review cases for which all avenues have been exhausted. The IAST authorizes services and mentors for youth at risk of out-of-home placement. In FY00, the IAST added a new component targeted with keeping youth up to the age of 13 out of the juvenile justice system.
The Community Caring Council received a grant from the Juvenile Justice Department of Public Safety to lower the incidence of referrals to the juvenile courts. Locally, this juvenile delinquency prevention program is known as the PACT (Parent And Child Together) program. The partnership with the local police department and juvenile office has helped implement several strategies aimed at reducing juvenile crime, such as the Chief’s (Chief of Police) Club, hiring an after school program coordinator to keep kids off the street and implementing the summer Gang Resistance Program.
Results
Funding/Return on Investment
Cape Girardeau Leverages $4 for Every Caring Communities Dollar Received to reduce juvenile law violations.
Noteworthy It is also important to note that the Community Caring Council has been an incubator in identifying and implementing programs that help to reduce juvenile law violations. Three of these successful programs (Family Resource Center, First Call for Help Resource and Referral Service, and Court Appointed Special Advocates) are now self-sufficient as far as funding is concerned, with the help of the Area Wide United Way taking them on as a United Way agency. The Community Caring Council remains a committed partner with each of these programs.
