OJJDP promotes delinquency prevention and early intervention efforts that reduce the flow of juvenile offenders into the juvenile justice system, the numbers of serious and violent offenders, and the development of chronic delinquent careers. Although removing serious and violent juvenile offenders from the street serves to protect the public, long-term solutions lie primarily in taking aggressive steps to stop delinquency before it starts or becomes a pattern of behavior. One way to do this is to support programs that emphasize family involvement and youth development; OJJDP supported several such programs in the past year.

The family programs represented a variety of approaches, including parent training, nurse-based home visitation for at-risk first-time mothers, problem solving, parent support groups led by parents themselves, and training and technical assistance for replicating exemplary programs. The nurse home visitation project, for example, sends nurses into the homes of at-risk first-time mothers to ensure the health of the mother and child. OJJDP's grantee, the University of Colorado Health Services Center at Boulder, is providing these services to five sites of Operation Weed and Seed (a national initiative to help make communities safe) and one site of SafeFutures (an OJJDP initiative to help communities address juvenile delinquency by implementing comprehensive programs that include a continuum of care). The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) transferred funds to OJJDP to evaluate the program. The evaluation is being conducted by the University of Colorado at Boulder. OJJDP also continued to fund a cooperative agreement with the University of Utah's Department of Health Education of Salt Lake City to provide training and technical assistance to communities interested in establishing or enhancing a continuum of family strengthening efforts. During FY 1998, this grantee began working on a number of OJJDP Bulletins, including one that describes effective family strengthening interventions and another that describes Parents Anonymous^SM, a well-known parent training and support program that is being used in communities across the country. Other OJJDP prevention programs addressed mental health, substance abuse, youth development, conflict resolution, mentoring, career preparation, drug prevention, violence prevention, and gang issues.

As part of its strong commitment to collaborate with other Federal agencies, OJJDP entered into several interagency agreements to address mental health and substance abuse issues. A partnership with HHS is helping to strengthen the capacity of jurisdictions to provide mental health and substance abuse treatment to at-risk and delinquent children in the juvenile justice system. In another partnership with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), OJJDP also transferred funds to the National Institute of Corrections to support the training and technical assistance work of the GAINS Center in Delmar, NY. The Center helps court and juvenile justice leaders improve treatment and services for juvenile offenders with co-occurring disorders (e.g., mental health and substance abuse). To reach American Indian youth (including those in the juvenile justice system) who are seriously emotionally disturbed and/or substance abusers with the Circles of Care treatment approach, OJJDP is supplementing a SAMHSA program that will support six to eight sites with grants and training and technical assistance. OJJDP also is working with the National Institute of Mental Health to support research on delinquent youth with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and on school-based interventions for at-risk elementary school students in South Carolina.

OJJDP, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Education, also continued to support the National Center for Conflict Resolution Education in FY 1998. Implemented by the Illinois Institute for Dispute Resolution of Urbana, IL, the center provides training, technical assistance, and resource materials to help schools, communities, and juvenile facilities establish conflict resolution programs. To help communities fight hate crimes, OJJDP also continued to fund the Education Development Center (EDC) of Newton, MA. During FY 1998, EDC continued to provide training and technical assistance to help schools implement Healing the Hate, a multipurpose curriculum for hate crime prevention in middle schools and other classroom settings.

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OJJDP Annual Report 1998	October 1999