NCJ Number
237956
Date Published
January 2011
Length
43 pages
Annotation
The Texas At-Risk Youth Services Project (ARYSP) is an interim research project whose mission is to provide legislative recommendations intended to improve the delivery of services to at-risk youth in the State; legislative recommendations in this report were developed through analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data obtained from a research group of youth involved at all levels of the juvenile justice system.
Abstract
One legislative recommendation for the 82nd Texas Legislature is to include a rider in the 2012-13 General Appropriations Bill to contract with an independent entity to review Texas' current methods of delivering services to at-risk youth, with attention to a model system for delivering these services with clear accountability measures. A second legislative recommendation is to amend a statute to mandate information-sharing and increased communication among the entities that serve at-risk youth. Four policy proposals are offered. First, focus resources and provide intervention and prevention services to at-risk youth as early as possible. Second, ensure comparable service delivery for at-risk youth who have not entered the juvenile justice system. Third, reduce duplicative services and assessments. Fourth, explore the possibility of using local public schools as social service delivery hubs. The targeted research group that led to these legislative recommendations and policy proposals included youth involved at all levels of the juvenile and/or criminal justice system, from the least restrictive to the most restrictive. The ARYSP methodology used juvenile offenders as the primary sample selection; however, it obtained all available information regarding other services received from birth until the day of data collection. Research subjects were selected from diverging geographic areas across the State. A total sample size for the quantitative component of the project (n=252) is relatively small and is not intended to be representative of the entire juvenile offender population. The goal of the case file review was to document the history of services for each child and allow the data to illuminate the various methods of service delivery across the State. 2 figures and appended project description and methodology and qualitative research results