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A Message From the Director

May has been a big month for TJJD.  We completed our first site visit at Giddings for the Youth In Custody Practice Model (YICPM).  It was great having the YICPM consulting team of Ned Loughran with the Council of Juvenile Correctional Administrators, Shay Bilchek and Michael Umpierre with the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform, and Kelly Dedel with One in 37 Research, Inc., on campus and meeting with our implementation team.  Giddings staff were gracious hosts and the time was well spent.  I am extremely excited about the opportunity the YICPM brings to TJJD.  This will give us a proactive chance to thoroughly examine ourselves to create safer campuses, help kids be more successful, become more cohesive and collaborative as an agency and establish a more positive culture.  Self-examination is never easy, but the result is worth it.  I look forward to the next 18 months.

Our Capstone Project continues to move forward with the Ron Jackson and Gainesville campuses demonstrating success in providing new opportunities for youth who have completed their GED or diploma.  We will be rolling this project out to our other three campuses within the next few months.  TJJD staff will also be doing a presentation on the program at the American Corrections Association conference in Boston in August.

We are also deep into the process of developing our five-year strategic plan.  Our planning and discussions centered around this plan have been productive thus far. Completion of the plan will provide framework to take a number of positive steps forward in the next few years.

On the county side, the regionalization effort is ramping up, and individual diversions should begin next month.  We hope to divert 10 to 12 youth from state care each month by funding placements at the county level.  This initiative provides great promise for increasing the programs and services at the local level, which will help limit the state population to those who truly cannot be served elsewhere. 

I want to express my appreciation and gratitude to all our county partners who have worked tirelessly with us through the development of our plan to regionalize services to youth who will be diverted from state placement.  A special thanks to the members of the Regionalization Task Force who doggedly stayed with what at times was a tedious undertaking. This will be such an important step in facilitating further growth and program development “closer to home.”

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