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About the Division
Mission and Vision
The Child Welfare League of America is the nation's oldest and largest membership-based child welfare organization. We are committed to engaging people everywhere in promoting the well-being of children, youth, and their families, and protecting every child from harm.
We envision a future in which families, neighborhoods, communities, organizations, and governments ensure that all children and youth are provided with the resources necessary to develop and grow into healthy, contributing members of society.
The Juvenile Justice Division serves the overall mission of the Child Welfare League of America on behalf of children and families involved in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems. This is accomplished by:
- Providing national leadership in promoting juvenile justice and child welfare systems coordination and integration.
- Collecting, analyzing, and disseminating information on child welfare and juvenile justice practices and policies that promote positive youth development.
- Advocating for implementation of sound legislation, policies and procedures that contribute to juvenile justice system reform and improvement and to the development of effective delinquency prevention and intervention programs and practices.
- Promoting the development and implementation of effective community-based intervention and treatment alternatives to reduce the reliance on incarceration for accused or adjudicated delinquent youth.
- Providing consultation, training, and technical assistance resources to implement systems integration and reform and to implement appropriate and effective responses to reduce juvenile delinquency and juvenile victimization.
Values
The Juvenile Justice Division of the Child Welfare League of America, with and through its member agencies, supports these core values:
- Every youth and family has value to society.
- Every youth is entitled to nurturance, protection, the chance to develop to his or her full human potential, and opportunities to contribute to the common good.
- The family, child welfare system, and the juvenile justice system have specific responsibilities, but society at large shares the responsibility for promoting healthy human growth and development.
- Youth thrive, or fail to thrive, in the context of families, kinship systems, and communities. Our work must recognize and value these connections.
- The agencies and organizations that comprise CWLA have come together because we share a common mission and value interdependence. The integration of the child welfare and juvenile justice systems will serve the interests of both systems, the youth and families we serve, and society at large. We know we are stronger by working collaboratively and in coordination.
- System integration and reform is best accomplished through a comprehensive, strategic planning process that embraces and values inclusion of youth, families, and a broad based representation of youth serving agencies and organizations and which utilizes the best available information, research, and practices to guide the process.
- The shared values that bind this learning organization include openness, trust, accountability, and a commitment to continuous quality improvement.
Goals
The Juvenile Justice Division of the Child Welfare League of America is committed to working with and through its member agencies in activities to reduce the incidence of juvenile delinquency nationwide and to reduce reliance on incarceration for accused or adjudicated delinquent youth by:
- Identifying, developing, and promoting community-based alternatives that support positive youth development while ensuring protection of the public safety.
- Developing and disseminating standards of practice as benchmarks for high-quality services that enhance positive youth development; strengthening families, neighborhoods, and communities; and improving integration and coordination of the juvenile justice and child welfare systems.
- Advocating for sound legislation and forming and supporting public policies in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems at the national, state, and local levels that contribute to the well-being of children, youth, families, neighborhoods, and communities.
- Promoting best practices and proven effective strategies that enhance systems integration and collaboration through training, consultation, conferences, publications, and other membership services.
- Ensuring that all juvenile justice and child welfare services are provided in a manner that demonstrates respect for the cultural and ethnic diversity of our neighborhoods and our nation.
- Promoting open exchange of data, resources, research, and ideas within and across all systems that serve children, youth, and families and serving as a conduit and repository for that information.
- Serving children, youth, families and the child welfare and juvenile justice systems by continually strengthening our member agencies and this, their national organization.
Fact Sheet
The Connection Between Child Maltreatment & Juvenile Delinquency: Partnerships to Create Coordinated and Integrated Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice Systems
The Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) is the nation's oldest and largest membership-based child welfare organization committed to engaging people everywhere in promoting the well-being of children, youth, and their families, and protecting every child from harm. CWLA envisions a future in which families, communities, organizations, and governments ensure that all children and youth are provided with the resources necessary to develop and grow into healthy, contributing members of society.
CWLA established the Juvenile Justice Division in July 2000, through a grant award from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The objective of the award included supporting the education of CWLA members [and other public and private youth serving agencies and organizations] on the connections between the child welfare and juvenile justice systems and the need for an integrated approach to programs and services. With credible research increasingly confirming the undeniable connection between child maltreatment, juvenile delinquency, and a variety of other associated negative outcomes, this work is of critical importance. It is through this focus that the CWLA Juvenile Justice Division will achieve the goal of reducing the incidence of juvenile delinquency nationwide and reducing the reliance on incarceration for accused or adjudicated delinquent youth.
CWLA believes that system integration and reform is best accomplished through a comprehensive, strategic planning process that embraces and values inclusion of youth, families, and a broad based representation of youth serving agencies and organizations. This approach utilizes the best available information, research, and practices to guide the process. With the recent release of the monograph A Framework for Community Action: Making Children a National Priority, CWLA has reaffirmed and deepened its commitment to support families, communities, agencies, and policymakers in their efforts to improve the lives of America's children and youth. The Framework offers a broad and inclusive vision of what America's children need to be healthy, safe, and to thrive, and what it will take for all families and communities to meet those needs. Drawing on knowledge from basic and applied research, the work and experiences of social service practitioners, and the life experiences of families and children, the Framework articulates
- a clear vision for children and youth that is national in scope,
- approaches to meeting children's 5 universal needs so they can grow up safe and healthy,
- fundamental principles that can guide efforts to meet children's needs,
- what we know about effective practices and programs and how that knowledge can be applied to meet the needs of children, youth, families, and communities, and
- key indicators we can use to measure progress in meeting children and youth's needs.
A wealth of excellent models and resources already exists to guide our work. By melding these into a broad blueprint for change, CWLA's Framework brings into sharper focus the scope of the challenges and opportunities that state and local jurisdictions and communities will encounter in working to better meet the needs of their children, youth, and families. Utilizing these proven effective models, resources, and the core principles articulated in the Framework to guide recommended actions, the CWLA Juvenile Justice Division has developed a process and methodology to assist state and local jurisdictions to achieve the goal of a more coordinated and integrated child welfare and juvenile justice system.
We have been actively engaged in disseminating information through a variety of mediums (e.g., state, regional, and local symposia, conference workshops, focus groups, and publication materials), providing training and technical assistance, and building a storehouse of promising and proven effective strategies. With the recent reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act providing further impetus for development of programs, practices, and policies toward improved system integration, CWLA is poised to assist your jurisdiction, agency, organization, or community to achieve improved outcomes for children, youth, and families. We look forward to developing a new, or deepening an existing, strategic partnership to accomplish this noble goal.
Child Welfare/Juvenile Justice Technical Assistance Initiative
CWLA believes that system integration and reform is best accomplished through a comprehensive, strategic planning process that embraces and values inclusion of youth, families, and a broad based representation of youth serving agencies and organizations. This approach utilizes the best available information, research, and practices to guide the process. With the release of the monograph A Framework for Community Action: Making Children a National Priority, CWLA has reaffirmed and deepened its commitment to support families, communities, agencies, and policymakers in their efforts to improve the lives of America's children and youth. A wealth of excellent models and resources already exists to guide our work. By melding these into a broad blueprint for change, CWLA's Framework brings into sharper focus the scope of the challenges and opportunities that state and local jurisdictions and communities will encounter in working to better meet the needs of their children, youth, and families.
Utilizing these proven effective models, resources, and the core principles articulated in the Framework to guide recommended actions, the CWLA Juvenile Justice Division has developed a process and methodology to assist state and local jurisdictions to achieve the goal of a more coordinated and integrated child welfare and juvenile justice system. This includes our recently released bulletin, Promoting a Coordinated and Integrated Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice System, as well as a Community Implementation Guidebook (which will be available soon). With the recent reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act providing further impetus for development of programs, practices, and policies toward improved system integration, CWLA is poised to assist your jurisdiction, agency, organization, or community to achieve improved outcomes for children, youth, and families. We look forward to developing a new, or deepening an existing, strategic partnership to accomplish this noble goal.
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