Belknap County Systems Integration Initiative

The Belknap County Citizens Council is now directing a broad effort to change the way the child protection and juvenile justice systems work with each other and with families in Belknap County. The broad goal is to develop a process that will identify early problems and then help families find the right programs and services. The Council has many partners that are helping with this project. Agency administrators and policy makers from Belknap County and the state are now working with the Council and its many associates on this countywide effort.

Systems Integration Initiative work areas and related committees of the Citizens Council include:

• Administrative Oversight Committee
• Leadership Executive Committee
• Data Information and Management Committee
• Legal and Policy Analysis Committee
• Professional Advisory Council (PAC/JJAC)
• Prevention Work Group
• Resources, Inventory and Assessment Committee
• Miscellaneous Reports & Information

Background

Historically, across the country and including Belknap County, the two systems that manage child welfare and juvenile justice have operated separately. Each system functions with different funding streams, different statutory mandates, different mission statements, different service plans, and generates different data, making collaboration across the two systems very difficult even when the same children and families are involved. The Belknap County Citizens Council quickly encountered these built-in obstacles when beginning its initial work with the juvenile justice system in 2002.

In 2007, while the Citizens Council was reviewing cost and numbers data from Belknap County child and youth placement services, as part of its first issue brief: “Perspectives on Child Maltreatment, CHINS and Delinquency in Belknap County”, one theme emerged. It was clear that the Council should advocate for some type of coordination and integration between these two massive systems so that the needs of children and families could be more efficiently and effectively addressed. The shrinking economy and the resulting massive state, county, and municipal budget cuts all provided an even greater imperative to this goal.

Following some preliminary research by Council members along with several key national connections already forged through previous Citizen Council projects, the Council was able to engage the consultant services of John Tuell to assist with the initial steps for a systems coordination initiative in Belknap County. Mr. Tuell is the Director for the Child Welfare League of America’s (CWLA) Child Welfare-Juvenile Justice System Integration Initiative and the CWLA Project Director for the MacArthur Foundation Models for Change: Systems Reform in Juvenile Justice Initiative.

Using the Council’s Issue Brief, “Perspectives on Child Maltreatment” as a basis for discussion, the Council convened a symposium on June 5, 2008 where targeted invitees were asked to:

• Explore the benefits of a coordinated system of care
• Identify critical components of the partnership that would be needed to support system coordination and integration in Belknap County
• Identify essential beginning action steps

The Citizens Council is reorganizing its committees and workgroups to accommodate this new and complex project:

• Administrative Oversight Committee This group will serve as the oversight, management and advisory body of this initiative.