The Children's Aid Society

Testimony Before The NYS Assembly Committee on Children and Families on Aftercare Services for Court-Involved Youth and Families

December 18, 2006

Good afternoon. I am Felipe Franco, director of Juvenile Justice programs for The Children’s Aid Society (CAS). I am appearing today with Denise Taylor, Director of the OCFS-CAS City Challenge Aftercare Collaboration located in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. We are also joined by Valerie Ellis, a parent of one of our City Challenge participants who has recently retuned form OCFS placement.

I would like to thank the New York State Assembly for looking into the Juvenile Justice System in New York State. We welcome the opportunity to share our experiences developing comprehensive aftercare services for youth under New York State Office of Children and Family Services’ care for the last 10 years and our commitment to children for the last 153 years.

The Children’s Aid Society, a multi-service agency serving children and families throughout New York City, has been committed to working with adolescents in the juvenile justice system for most of our history. Established in 1853, CAS began formally working with juvenile delinquents in 1864, with the establishment of the first industrial school for boys.

In 1996, the U.S. Department of Justice and The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention brought in The Children’s Aid Society to develop an aftercare component for a New York State Office of Children and Family Services’ (OCFS) Henry Johnson Youth Leadership Academy. From the onset we understood that good aftercare begins at the facility and in the family system before the youth return to the community. The CAS City Challenge aftercare collaboration (OCFS, CAS and DoE) created a comprehensive program through which youth and families could immediately be connected to services and education upon return to the community. In 1999, The State of New York Division of Criminal Justice Services conducted an evaluation of the state juvenile correctional system. The report found that 81% of boys and 45% of girls leaving OCFS facilities were rearrested within three years. The same report found that only 51% of boys who went through the CAS-City Challenge program were rearrested within three years, and a significantly lower number of arrests were for violent crimes. (Girls were not yet involved in City Challenge, so we are unable to report on their rates of recidivism.)

Encouraged by these findings, OCFS and CAS embarked on a process of self-assessment. The program showed signs of success with many participants and proven effectiveness with families, but there remained a proportion of participants who reunited with their negative peers and continued to identify with gangs and crime. To address the participants’ need for a sense of belonging, CAS opened a Boys and Girls Club in City Challenge in 2001. This ground-breaking concept of operating a Boys and Girls Club within a juvenile delinquency facility provided proven youth development programs and helped youth identify with a nationally recognized organization that they could continue attending in their neighborhoods. Currently the Boys and Girls Clubs of America has over 65 clubs embedded within detention and correctional facilities across the nation; with our technical support and federal funding, Boys and Girls Clubs of America launched the National Targeted Re-entry Initiative in 2003.

In 2001 a partnership among OCFS, CAS and The New York State Alliance of Boys and Girls Clubs was formed to provide state-of-the-art aftercare services to all adjudicated youth returning to the Bronx and Manhattan. In addition to the supervision provided by OCFS staff, The Children’s Aid Society runs two welcoming centers in Manhattan and the Bronx where youth and families reunite and develop a plan for their re-entry to home and community. The welcoming centers provide health services and identify the needs and interests of youth and families that can be met at their neighborhood Boys and Girls Club. Every youth is assigned a club staff person who serves as his mentor, facilitates enrollment in various prescribed programs and activities and monitors participation with the goal of developing a long-term relationship between the youth and the Boys & Girls Club.

The most innovative aspect of CAS’ Juvenile Justice efforts is its two-pronged approach:
1. The Children’s Aid Society and others work to address the unique needs and concerns of young people and their families reunifying after placement.
2. The Boys and Girls Clubs encourage them to participate in mainstream programming with other youth in their neighborhoods with similar interests who have not been involved in the juvenile justice system.

Since 2001 the Community Re-entry Program has served over 1,000 participants from Manhattan and the Bronx with impressive outcomes:
 OCFS reports that 67% of participants in the Community Re-Entry Program successfully complete aftercare without revocations, AWOLS or re-arrests.
 The majority of referred families come with their son and/or daughter to take part in the welcoming and planning process for their teen’s return to home and community.
 Over 25% of Community Re-Entry participants continue participation in Boys and Girls Club programming a year after release from an OCFS facility, some even longer, beyond their aftercare period.
 100% of youth are connected to medical, dental and health counseling and family planning services at teen focus clinics with specialists in adolescent pediatrics.
 35% of yearly participants obtain part time, or summer employment at neighborhood Boys and Girls Clubs, either through our own privately funded neighborhood youth employment program, DYCD Summer Youth Employment or through The New York Times Foundation Summer Job Program.
 The Community Re-entry Program has become an important complement to other programs such as The Center for Court Innovation’s Juvenile Re-Entry Network, The Children’s Village Multi Systemic Therapy, Vera Institute of Justice’s Adolescent Portable Therapy and our own Functional Family Therapy.

The model that has developed from this public-private partnership for the City Challenge and Community Re-Entry Program pays equal attention to risk factors and protective factors, and understands the need for ongoing guidance and connectedness beyond aftercare for a successful transition to adulthood.

Despite the knowledge that aftercare can make a significant difference in the lives of our youth, can provide significant savings by reducing recidivism and makes our communities safer by reducing crime, a surprisingly small percentage of the New York State Office of Children and Family Services’ budget is allocated to preventive and aftercare services.

On most occasions, with the exception of programs such as the City Challenge Program, where we work with the youth and the families six months before discharge, community service providers are forced to hit the ground running, as they are involved in the youth treatment plan only a few weeks before a son/daughter returns to the community. Community service providers should play an important part of the programming at all OCFS residential facilities. This will allow youth and families to develop relationships with needed service providers before the youth returns home. This continuity of services, as proposed in the Intensive Aftercare Model (IAP), has been shown to significantly reduce recidivism.

I look forward to a day where service providers such as The Children’s Aid Society, Boys and Girls Clubs and others can start working with youth and families in advance of youths’ return to their homes and communities. I also strongly believe that opening the doors of OCFS facilities to capable community service providers will impact positively on the environment of these facilities and enhance the services to residents while in care.