Fixing a Broken System of Funding Youth Prevention, Intervention Programs

If you are a young person in Los Angeles County who feels angry, has poor grades or disrespects authority, you might be “recruited” to voluntarily work with a probation officer and receive services — as long as you’ve never been on probation before.

Children’s Village Transformative Mentoring

The Children's Village in the Bronx offers mentors to teenagers who face aging out of foster care. The mentors, or "credible messengers," are former foster children themselves. They use writing and conversation and draw from their personal experiences to motivate these foster teens.

room confinement: Michael Umpierre (headshot), deputy director of Center for Juvenile Justice Reform, smiling man with short dark curly hair, dark jacket, white shirt, dark blue striped tie

New Initiative Will Help Raise the Bar for Serving Youth in Custody

Increasingly, juvenile justice advocates and system partners are calling for the closure of large, prison-like youth facilities. While these reforms are critically important given the research showing the dangers of confinement — particularly for low-risk youth — the practical reality is that reaching such a paradigm shift will not happen overnight.

Aging Out, Stepping Up

James Milan entered foster care at age 4. “My childhood wasn’t the greatest,” he says wryly. “I was trying to figure out why my mother didn’t want me, why my father wasn’t there.” In and out of foster care homes and group homes, he found the Claremont Neighborhood Center in the Bronx, N.Y., — and now works as a senior counselor there with kids ages 5 through 13.