TJJD News & Announcements

VAN ZANDT COUNTY, Texas – DiAnna Reich of Van Zandt County is the program administrator for the Just Kids Hands On Pet Education (JK HOPE) Program which was recently profiled in the Grand Saline Sun newspaper. Reich is a Grand Saline police officer who handles code enforcement and animal control. The program has been in place for five years and has three aspects: Animal Shelter, School Intervention, and Community Awareness. With the Animal Shelter and School Intervention Programs, youth participate in a six-week program either at the shelter or at school with classroom time and hands on training working with a dog. The dogs are transformed into well-mannered pets more likely to be adopted into a loving home. In the Community Awareness program, the youth participate in adoption clinics, presentations, and festivals where the youth are able to demonstrate what they have learned. The article in the Sun describes the value of JK HOPE for the kids saying, “The program aims to provide youth ...

GAINESVILLE, Texas – It’s hard to believe it has already been a year since PAWS (Pairing Achievement With Service) came to the Gainesville campus. The program, in place since June 2016, has done very well by both human and dog standards. Many dogs have been adopted, with one going on to do therapy work in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. PAWS also recently acquired a service dog in training from Service Dogs Inc. that will soon go to formal training at their Dripping Springs facility and be paired with a client in need. Youth from the Gainesville facility did an incredible job building the one and only PAWS Dog Park for the program. Youth, along with the help and supervision of welding teachers Denver Foster and Dennis Westerlin, and Carl Motley, Director of Security, constructed, welded, and painted the dog park structure. “It was really a lot of hard work… and hot!” stated one youth who contributed his welding skills to the project. Members from the Gainesville Student Support Counc...

Reprinted from the December 26, 2016 High Plains Journal. By Jennifer M. Latzke If you talk to J.D. Ragland very long, you’ll quickly realize that in his eyes, every “kiddo” has potential for great things. All they need is a nudge in the right direction. That nudge is the basis of the Randall County Dream Team Program in Canyon, Texas. This program takes select at-risk youth in seventh and eighth grades and uses the swine 4-H project to teach them skills and build confidence. All of it is in the hope of intervening at a critical crossroad in their development and pointing them down the path away from the juvenile justice system. The Dream Team was an idea that came about because the Randall County judge and the County Commissioners’ Court were frankly tired of seeing at-risk youth in the juvenile justice system. Not only does it cost the county upward of $35,000 per youth per year to house and feed juvenile offenders, but there’s also a tremendous personal cost to the at-risk...