← Youth Justice Transformation in Action
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- [00:00]
Julie Austin
Foreign.
- [00:15]
Jodi Martin
Welcome to Season two of Youth Justice Transformation in Action. We are the RFK National Resource center for Juvenile justice and we are on a mission to transform the youth justice system by partnering with people like you who are passionate about improving outcomes for youth, families and communities you serve. I'm Jodi Martin.
- [00:32]
John Toole
And I'm John Toole. This season we are excited to highlight jurisdictions across the country who partnered with us through the OJJDP funded Dennison Mondoro Probation and Juvenile Justice System Enhancement Project. You will learn about their experiences, including their challenges, innovative solutions and valuable lessons learned and have an opportunity to explore how their successful reform efforts make be replicated within your state or local community.
- [00:58]
Jodi Martin
In today's episode, Achieving Success Through Organizational Change, John interviews our guests Julie Austin, Director of Youth and Family Programming, and Stacy Denny, Director of Case Management for the Greene County Juvenile Office in the 31st Judicial District of Missouri. Julie and Stacy will highlight the importance of good communication inside and outside of the organization, sharing a unified philosophy that prioritizes adolescent development and positive youth development, and the organizational changes that were critical to improving system performance and ultimately achieving positive outcomes for justice involved youth in their community. Thank you for joining us.
- [01:37]
John Toole
Greetings everyone and welcome to another edition of Season two of our podcast series at the RFK National Resource center for Juvenile Justice. We are privileged today to welcome Stacy Denny, Director of Case Management for the Greene County Juvenile Office and Julie Austin, Director of Youth and Family Program in the Greene County Juvenile Office in the 31st Judicial District of Missouri. Julie, please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit more about the jurisdiction in which you work.
- [02:06]
Julie Austin
Absolutely. I'll start out with a little information about Springfield. Springfield's the third largest city in Missouri. We're nestled in the southwest corner of the Ozarks. We have about 172,000 residents, really heavy in colleges and universities. We have several here in the area and it's just a great place to live. As for me, I'm the Director of Youth and Family programming, so I'm responsible for our secure detention facility, our alternative school, as well as our youth empowerment programs and our High Risk Victims coordinator. So I have a team of about 35 people, 24 of those are in detention and I come to the field of juvenile in a little bit of a non traditional route. I spent over 20 years in finance and tech. I became more and more educated on systemic injustices and issues and ultimately I decided I wanted to change careers and find a way to really get back to my community. So I went back to school for social work Got a bachelor's and master's in social work and have been in juvenile justice now for five years. And I love it.
- [03:09]
Stacy Denny
So, as John introduced me, I am Stacy Denny, and my title is director of case management for our juvenile office in Missouri. We have a position and a model that we follow where we have deputy juvenile officers. So they act as kind of an in between, from a probation officer, prosecutor to probation officer. So we are able to have officers that are specialized in adolescent development working with kids. And so they're able to kind of interfere when we receive referrals and make sure that we get the right services to kids as they come into our office. So our office handles matters of abuse and neglect, as well as delinquency issues. So I oversee all of the different deputy juvenile officers in our office that handle those. Those cases.
- [04:00]
John Toole
Stacey, tell us a little bit about what drew you into this field.
- [04:03]
Stacy Denny
Absolutely. So I grew up in Springfield. I am one of these kids that we provide services to. I, in fact, services from the office that I now work in. So growing up here, I got a really good idea of what was available and not available to kids, what it looks like to be a teenager in this city. And I always felt really strongly that I wanted to give back to my own community. And one of the ways that that kind of sorted itself out for me was to start working at our juvenile office while I was in graduate school. And it really kind of developed into a career that I found myself very passionate and allowed me to continue to be a resource for the community that I grew up in.
- [04:49]
John Toole
Stacy and Julie, thank you for that background. Those are compelling stories about why you are so committed to serving the youth and families in your jurisdiction currently. And it leads into why. It was apparent that you were critical contributors to the opportunities to enhance the system processes, protocols, policies, and, of course, the services to the youth and families in Greene county through our probation and youth justice system review that we conducted in Greene county as part of the Dennis M. Mondoro Juvenile Justice System Enhancement Project. Very early in the system review, as you all were exercising your leadership, you identified the organizational structure for your office as an impediment to the positive change you were seeking to impact. If that was apparent to you both so early, what enabled or empowered you to address this issue?
- [05:43]
Stacy Denny
John? I would start with. It was all the members of RFK that helped us identify that as an impediment to what. What we were seeing in our office. First, we're grateful to be given that information to allow us. And it really Helped give us permission to start there. I think so often in criminal justice entities, whether that be focused with youth or adults, it's really difficult to be able to pause and take the time to focus on organizational structure, policies, and make sure that as a system and a business, you are running well. And so to be able to have the opportunity to see that and be given that information and then be able to take the time to focus on that and make those changes.
- [06:32]
Julie Austin
I think one of the benefits of having RFA come in was really that outside look into our office. A lot of us had a feeling that there was something structurally challenging that made it harder to do our job. But from the inside, we weren't able to see it. So it was really beneficial having people come in from the outside to take a look and really point those things out. I also want to say it's a credit to our chief, to Stacy and Rachel of our quality team, were really the three key people that championed the Mondoro coming in. And I think it's hard to have those hard conversations and to look and make change. And so it's really a credit to the leadership team that we were even willing to say, hey, this is a good idea.
- [07:15]
Stacy Denny
I think I'd like to add a little context that what was identified is our chief juvenile officer was essentially supervising. I think it was 17 different people in management. And I just think it made it really difficult to be able to give the focus and attention to things because he was just stretched really thin. So to Julie's point, he gets a lot of the credit of being able to say that he needed some additional supports and changed the structure so that we could give more focus to the different areas of our office. And so through that, we were able to take the time to develop a change task force. And that change task force spent several months talking about what the structure of the office looked like at the time, discuss the different issues that that was creating, as well as be able to learn and get education on different types of organizational structures and the importance of focusing on organizational structure so that you can have the right people with the right amount of focus on their areas to be able to make changes, be able to, you know, hold individuals accountable, be able to provide the kind of direction to those in management, those are working directly with our youth and families, and make sure that our focus and our philosophy comes all the way through the organizational structure.
- [08:46]
John Toole
I think your answers provide evidence of your humility, and I appreciate that you're also giving credit. I think where credit is due to Bill Prince, the family court administrator and the chief juvenile officer where you work, and Rachel Hogan, who's the director of quality services in the juvenile office as well. So in line with the humility all four of you demonstrated, the courage and the desire to bring about that change, and your diligence in exploring the best possible structure I think we're going to talk about, has resulted in some very positive opportunities for the Greene County General office. And obviously, the beneficiaries are the youth and the families. So I appreciate that you were also the recipient of some technical assistance around implementation science or change management. Could you comment on how that provided a roadmap or some vision or support to your ongoing efforts in the organizational restructuring?
- [09:48]
Julie Austin
So the implementation science really brought us a common language and framework to work within. So it helped us to kind of understand the science behind change, how to do that effectively, and what goes into really effective change. And so it helped us slow down, it made us be more thoughtful. It helped us all get a common language around data and why data is important. I think the other thing that we really learned through the implementation science was just the overwhelming amount of listening that needs to be done and the importance of communicating and then communicating about what you're communicating and then communicating again and then realizing that no one has understood what you communicated and you need to communicate again. So I think it was just a really, really important process to help us be really clear about what we were doing and why.
- [10:40]
Stacy Denny
I know one of the things that we've since the change task force been able to do is really kind of ingrain that in our practices. So with all of the management that I supervise, and I know Julie does this as well, you know, part of the expectations for those managers are that they are thinking about feedback loops constantly, anytime there's a change, even if it's a simple revamp of a policy, as well as, of course, a major change to some process in the office. The first part of that conversation is what's our goal? How do we want to accomplish that? Is everybody on the same page with what that looks like, what's our timeline, and how do we communicate that? So always thinking about those different levels of communication as well. So always building in group conversations, individual conversations, providing information to give people time to think about it before we're asking for feedback. So really being able to ingrain that in our processes moving forward, and being able to just maintain that, hopefully forever.
- [11:53]
Julie Austin
One more thing that I would want to add around implementation science, not only has it changed how we work internally, but it's also changed how we work externally. And so I think one of the unspoken benefits from the Mondoro Project and the lessons that we learned around effective communication has been an increased collaboration within our office and the other agencies that we work with. Everybody that works in juvenile justice knows that it is a wide variety of service providers and agencies that ultimately provide assistance to these kids and their families. And our ability to work well together is as important as our internal inner workings and interpersonal relationships. So I think that was another benefit of that training that we got.
- [12:39]
John Toole
You guys have made reference to those external agency relationships. You've made reference to the internal processes regarding communication. I think our good friends at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Impact center, would speak to that in terms of co creation, which recognizes the importance of all levels of staff participation in the change process. Were you able to successfully execute those communication strategies and bring in all levels of staff and your external stakeholders as well?
- [13:11]
Stacy Denny
I think we were. We were able to do focus groups. So our change task force took place during the height of the pandemic. So we had a lot of people working from home trying to avoid large groups in the same room. However, we were able to really kind of pivot and utilize technology, I think, to our advantage. During this process. Our focus groups were done via zoom. And so we had large zoom meetings where we were able to provide information about what we were doing, talk about all of the information that we were hoping to get from people, try to be able to build in the trust in the change task force to give that information that in some ways was going to be negative towards other people or sensitive towards people that they were currently working with. And so we were able to utilize zoom rooms to then have smaller conversations where we could structure the people that were in those rooms to make sure that they were going to have somewhat of shared experiences, to be able to help build that trust and provide that open conversation and feedback around that. We also worked on utilizing surveys throughout the office, being able to get written feedback from people. We also utilized what we at the time had as supervisor meetings to be able to provide information about just different steps of the process that the change task force was going through, be able to help them understand what we were considering and doing. And then when we eventually made the announcement of the structural change, we were able to have a meeting with just management. And then within almost that same meeting, we gave some space to management, and then after that opened a zoom meeting with the entire office to be able to provide that information as well. So you Know, like Julie talked about, communication is really hard. It's really difficult when you are in the middle of something to make sure that you are sharing information for everybody to be able to fully understand and get that full picture. But I do think that we were really successful in making sure that we were providing information to all, all different levels of the office and getting feedback from them.
- [15:38]
Julie Austin
Yeah. The only thing I would add to that is I think anyone going into a major change initiative like this, I think it's really important at the beginning to let them know that there is no magic bullet around communication. There is no message that you can craft that will be fully understood by everyone. So the fact that there's miscommunication and misunderstanding isn't an indication that you're doing it wrong. It's an indication that you're changing, and that's just a part of it. And so being open to that negative feedback and being able to hear people say you haven't told them something you're certain you told them is a part of change. And being able to accept that and say, okay, let's see how we can say that differently, or let's talk through that is a really important part of it. I would have liked to have been told that in the beginning of this process because I think we really tried hard, but there just isn't any perfect communication tool.
- [16:33]
John Toole
I was with you for a good part of that and was able to witness the resistance that you inevitably face when change is cast upon us. And it was that thoughtfulness that pay attention to the communication strategies and the diligence with which you pursued them that I think has enabled your success and I hope will enable from your lessons learned others to achieve this kind of success. Specifically, the success that we're speaking to permitted you to enact new policies that prioritize some key features of the youth justice system that are attached to successful performance and successful youth outcomes. Specifically, you prioritized adolescent development, a strength based perspective and a focus on active trauma symptoms or the care for those youth who are experiencing trauma histories. With this renewed commitment to the key fundamentals, what positive change have you and Greene county been able to accomplish in probation?
- [17:30]
Stacy Denny
I think we've been able to make huge progress since we worked on the Mondoro project. And I'm really proud of the progress that we've been able to make. I think one of the first things that we were able to do was to implement a staffing protocol, really putting together initially an internal team of members of our office to cover lots of different expertise have clinical, social work, criminal justice, the officers working directly with the families, members of our detention staff, our legal staff, to come together anytime we're making a true change in the trajectory of that case, to put lots of eyes on that and talk about all of the different things going on in that youth's life and circumstance to make sure that we feel confident and well informed as we are changing the possibility of the direction that that case is going. I think that that can be really difficult when you are the officer working directly with that family and may need to give them information that isn't exactly what they wanted to hear about that case. And so throughout that process, we've had struggles with that too, of making sure that we are getting that officer voice, to make sure that we're hearing everything that they say and having members of that staffing team that aren't always directly working with that family to give that the consideration that it well deserves. We've also been able to develop that where we have a regular practice of inviting our community partners into that staffing as well. So if we know that they are working with a therapeutic partner, our children's division, their parents have joined staffings, we want to make sure that we get all of the information that we can. So again, we're making a really well informed decision around the future of that use case with our office. We also were able to spend several months going through really the case initiation and engagement and update and create a lot of new policy around the way our officers look at that initial engagement with our families. So we've added in sharing adolescent development research to the parents and sharing with them that that is part of our decision making and making sure that they receive that education as well. We have been able to add time to the officer getting to know that youth and their family and really trying to dig into our assessment process quite a bit more. So giving more time to be able to build rapport, understanding that we need to be able to get some sensitive information from each of these youth to make sure that we can provide them with the appropriate services. You have to recognize that in our role we're going to walk in with a certain level of authority and it's really hard to bring somebody into a room that is probably scared, probably knows that you may be asking them to do some things that they don't want to do and ask them to immediately trust you and immediately be vulnerable and share some of the things that they've gone through. So really trying to bulk up the time that they're able to build that rapport with the youth so that they can get the information that they need. We have also been able to pilot an incentive program for our youth that we have on supervision. So, of course we have some tangible items, but we have also built in ways outside of just giving items to youth. We have it built into the process that they can get off of supervision early. They can have built in changes to the structure and the rules that they may need to be following and making sure that we really built in the research behind incentive programs into that policy and making sure that we're providing that education to the officers so that they can communicate that well to the youth. So a huge piece of information that we are utilizing is making sure that you're using incentives more than sanctions, trying to utilize a 4 to 1 ratio, as well as recognizing that incentives and sanctions don't have to be mutually exclusive from each other. There are times that those can be used together to help make sure that we are getting the behavior change that we're looking for out of that youth while they're on supervision.
- [22:05]
John Toole
Stacy, thank you. That's a great inventory of critical policies that you all have been able to implement and sustain that are having an impact on the youth in your community. I appreciate that level of detail and that recognition. Julie, it is not always routine that our system review examines the detention facility. But in this particular circumstance in Greene county, it seemed to call for a review of what was going on in detention, what was driving the policies and practices towards success or challenges. Could you comment on what you've been able to do in detention as a result of this system review?
- [22:42]
Julie Austin
So I became the director over detention during this change process. And luckily we were blessed with part of your consultant team, which had some specialties in detention, which were very helpful to us in looking at how to integrate detention into the continuum of care. So I think what we had seen in the past was detention was kind of a silo apart from the office. That really was a pause in the case management and in the case of the youth. And what we've done since the Mondoro Project is bring detention more integrated into the office and part of a continuum of care. And that was not without its significant challenges. So one of the things that we did do is shut our detention down for three months and rooted kids out or routed kids out to other areas in our region. And during those three months, we changed our leadership team. We were able to get adequate staffing. We were very understaffed before that. So we were able to beef up our staffing. And then we just talked through what the culture and reasons for having detention were. And what we've really landed on and stressed is that juvenile detention exists for safety reasons. It is not a punitive tool. There are certainly traumas involved with putting a child in detention. So we are very thoughtful around who comes into our detention center and we limit that as much as we can. But once they get there, our job is to introduce them to the juvenile system and introduce them to a system that is created to help them get back on the right track. And so we are really trying to start using the same language, the same curriculum, the same philosophies that the rest of the office is using. So that when that youth has their case disposed and they're either on probation, maybe they come to our alternative school, but they're coming into a system that is functioning very similar to the one that they have been introduced to in detention. And so that has meant that we've added in therapy services, we have structured groups every night. But the biggest difference, I think was really bringing in a leadership team that is trauma informed, has a lot of adolescent brain development background. They're able to really come in and think through why we do the things we do, explain that to our officers and our detention staff, and just really make sure that we are seeing these kids through the lens of positive youth development and through the same lens that the rest of the office sees them in. And that is that we are here to provide them resources and services to get them back on track. And that's been a huge difference for us in detention. We have seen a tremendous change just by providing some mental health in the facility. And that has led to us getting a full time mental health professional in the budget for next year. So we're excited about that.
- [25:38]
John Toole
Julie, that's great. And indeed, what you've represented in your response is that detention is part of the ongoing set of services that try to resurrect a positive behavior change pattern for these youth. Truth, it's not a break in service, it's part of the efforts of your office. I appreciate you capturing it that way and your leadership in producing all of these changes in that environment. All the environments you all are talking about are difficult. I know you realize change is hard, change is constant. You met some resistance throughout this process. Can you comment a little bit about how you handled that resistance? And quite honestly, I know the case is that you experienced some departures from existing staff when this change process really began its implementation. Could you comment on that circumstance? And how you manage that.
- [26:27]
Stacy Denny
We had several departures since the start of the Mondoro project and the change in management. Our probation, what we call our law status unit, has now seen a 100% turnover. While that's unfortunate, you hate to see that many people leave your organization. I truly, truly feel like we were able to identify simple differences in philosophy. And I think that there were several people that were able to leave the organization and find something that was a better fit for their philosophy around youth justice. And I think that's great for everybody in that circumstance. And along with that, we've been able to bring on a great team of people that all really believe in the mission of our office and the way that we feel is appropriate to manage these cases and treat our youth and families. We have been able to come into a really good position because of that. I have been able to lead a team of management that, like we've talked about earlier, have been able to be really ingrained in implementation science and the way that they handle change. And I think that that's been a huge benefit to the office as well. We expect all of our managers to meet regularly with their staff individually, as well as including what we call skip a level meetings. I take time to meet with officers that report to the managers that report directly to me. And I do think that we have gotten a lot of positive feedback from our officers. A lot of that feedback is feeling really heard and supported by their managers. And that is a shift in some of the feedback that we were receiving previously. So I'm really proud of that. So while there are challenges and there was resistance, I just truly feel like we have come out on the other side in a much more positive space, and I'm simply proud of that.
- [28:34]
John Toole
The story you are telling is compelling. It now covers about two and a half years because you made the system review process a dynamic process. Change began early in the system review, well before we produced a final report for you all to consider our findings and recommendations. We're two and a half years in and you're still reflecting as if these changes are present and current, so therefore sustainable. But we would be remiss if we weren't also associating that change with data. With the data collection and the quality oversight and the quality improvement efforts that you make. It's the routine reporting that is imperative to help manage and continue and sustain that change. You have taken on efforts to expand the commitment to that quality assurance approach. Can you comment a little bit about that commitment you've made and the benefits you derive from that?
- [29:30]
Stacy Denny
I would start with, we talk about the change as if it's present, because it is. We are continuing to work on making sure that we follow evidence based practices and that is a long term change for our office. So alongside that we have been able to build up a team to be able to analyze and measure those changes and what that looks like. So one of the ways that we've done that, we now have a team of three people that are dedicated to data analysis and quality assurance. So they're able to help provide education as well as built in systems. So we have a series of databases so that we can gather the information that we need to be able to draw the measurements that we want to be able to look at and be able to make the changes according to those measurements. We have been able to really dig into the assessments that we are utilizing with our youth and build those back into our databases so we can pull information to be able to help guide us in the decisions that we're making with those youth and see what their long term impacts are. So we have really just been able to get into a place where we can see long term recidivism rates within our office. And one of the areas that we're really proud of is with our diversion services, which for our office is, is preventative. Those are those first time referrals. We do also allow for families to reach out to our office and ask for services that may not have had contact with law enforcement. And we have been able to see a recidivism rate of, or a lack of recidivism of about 75 to 80% of the youth in our diversion services. Because those are prevention services, they are voluntary services for most of our families. So they may or may not receive services. And the families that are willing to work with it, work with us, will receive robust services. And so knowing that we are having those youth not return to our office really tells us to continue to follow that path and that that is working for us.
- [31:41]
John Toole
I think I know the answer to this. But your commitment to this continuous quality improvement is not just the recidivism data, but it's also the data that supports the quality oversight of your performance expectations. Am I correct that that was also a piece of what you developed out of this commitment?
- [31:59]
Julie Austin
Absolutely. In detention we have been able to really embed quality into our services. And so that unit is part of our unit meetings. We meet with them on a regular basis to talk about what we're doing and take a methodical approach to you know, why are you doing what you're doing? What are you doing? How do you know it's working? How can we measure that? What data do we need to measure? And I would just say that part of bringing quality in and making quality a key part of an organization does take an embrace of the process from leadership on down. And so I think it's really important that one, we're very blessed to be able to invest in quality and have a quality person dedicated to that. You know, we don't take that for granted, but that's very fortunate for our circuit. But I think making sure that quality is embedded across the units, that it's there in your meetings, they're there talking. They're the ones that are helping you think about that is really important because it can be a little intimidating to bring data and measurement into a human services environment. I think at its heart, data feels a little cold, and the work we do is pretty warm. And so meshing those two is an art form to make sure that people see that you're using the data to enhance services, to improve services, and you're not taking the people out of the equation, but you're putting some numbers into the equation to help the people. I think is really important.
- [33:30]
John Toole
I want to ask if there's any additional successes that I haven't asked about that you would like to highlight in Greene county that have a current heard over the last couple years in this transition period for you.
- [33:41]
Julie Austin
One thing I want to go back to when we were talking about supporting staff through the implementation. I know we've mentioned Rachel Hogan, who's our Director of Quality. We also have Director of legal, Brittany O'Brien. We have a Director of Clinical, Ashley Montgomery, and Director of Operations, Jill Randolph. And then we also have our Director of Family Court Services, Chelsea Orchard. And they have been instrumental. I think staffing anything through a big change takes a leadership team that is willing to stick together when it gets really, really hard. Stacy talked about the turnover that we saw in the office. Those inflection points are an easy point to quit. It's an easy point to say, this isn't working. We need to do something different. But I think what we were able to do is come together and have a shared vision. And we all really believed in the philosophies and theories that RFK brought to the table and that we all independently went out and learned more about. And that camaraderie, that ability to kind of support one another, really helped us stick through the change. So I think you have to Find that team of people within your organization that are on board and have them kind of support one another through the hard times of change.
- [35:02]
John Toole
Let me just offer that I appreciate you raising that, Julie. Clearly it's not just a concept. It is a research based element of successful youth justice performance. And that is that it's guided by a collaboration, a true team. When teams function well together with similar philosophies grounded in research based evidence, it's easy to rally. And it appears that you all have done just that. Relying on this collaboration to continue to inform the progress of change. It is truly a transformation of your youth justice system. I just want to take a moment to reflect and ask maybe a personal, professional kind of question. And for either of you, whoever wants to start, if you could change one thing about youth justice, what would that be?
- [35:49]
Stacy Denny
I think a understanding of community justice partners and their role in our ability to make change with the youth and families that we work with. We can't do this alone and we need community partners to be able to come alongside us where we are located. We have seen a huge increase in youth with mental health needs that are being really kind of forced into our system. And we are not solely equipped to handle those cases. In a lot of ways, we've taken on a role of being able to find those resources and make sure that families are connected, being able to utilize team meetings to help other agencies communicate with each other. And I do think one problem with that is that people don't always recognize that as an issue. Another problem with that are the resources that we need oftentimes don't actually exist. And it can really make our jobs difficult because we may be choosing kind of the lesser of two evils in these cases. And we are working really hard to make sure that we are providing appropriate services and really making sure that we support the youth and the families and make sure that they get the services that they need. Again, we can't solely always do that and oftentimes it doesn't exist. So I think the one thing that I would love to change about youth justice is the connection among people, connection with other youth justice agencies, connection among community justice partners, connection with youth justice members and educators, and making sure that we can all really come alongside and support each other, because all that's going to do is provide benefit and resources to our youth and families.
- [37:45]
John Toole
You both know of my extreme interest in sports. Success in the youth justice system is a team sport. It requires the collaboration for us all to go in the one direction, the same direction, in order to achieve success. That's the way I look at it. I think that's what you just captured in your commitment to improving youth justice. I appreciate that, Julie.
- [38:06]
Julie Austin
I would echo certainly everything Stacy just said. Resources are always a challenge within all of our systems, and not just resources for our systems, but our families lack resources. We see the impact of poverty can't be overstated in the juvenile justice system. And that comes back to community resources as well, being able to support those families when it comes to juvenile justice. Having come to this from the outside, I didn't know anything about juvenile justice before I came into the system to begin working here. So I think a coordinated effort on education to the general public, I don't think they understand adolescent brain development well. I don't think they have any idea about the lack of resources. The impact of lax gun laws is not understood when it comes to the impact on juveniles. So I think the ability for juvenile justice experts in the field, like ourselves, to be able to know how and when and have a platform to talk to the general public, to talk to legislators, and really impact change in policy is really, really important because we have thousands of people that dedicate their lives to working with these kids. But if the community isn't there, it's not going to happen. And so we need the ability to really do that education for either of.
- [39:32]
John Toole
You, Would you care to leave the audience with any gems that you want to share as a last message?
- [39:37]
Julie Austin
I just want to build a little bit on Stacy talking about connections. I think if there was one thing that I would like all of us to think about is the impact that the last few years have had on our communities, our society, but really specifically our kids. I feel like we talk a lot about the pandemic and what it did to society. It was an opportunity for us to model community care, and we dropped the ball, and we didn't do that. When we look at the kids today, we need to look at what we're modeling for them when it comes to conflict resolution and how we're talking to one another. And just be really, really mindful that if we don't figure out how to reconnect in our communities and our families and our places of business, these kids aren't going to see how to connect. And so that would be my final thought, is just, you know, let's all be kinder to one another. We have a saying around here. Talk to each other, not about each other. You know, let's figure out how to come together and solve these problems, because they're worth it and they need us to be able to model that.
- [40:43]
Stacy Denny
I think I would just add a gratitude and a thankfulness for anyone that is listening to this podcast that is doing this work, that is learning more about this kind of work. We've talked a lot about making big system change and that's really hard system change, working with teenagers, working with families. It's all really hard and we don't get thank yous enough. And we are oftentimes making really difficult decisions about other people's lives and we really, really try to appreciate our impact on the trajectory of others lives and that makes it a really difficult line of work to be in and so forth. Anybody out there that is doing this kind of work, interested in this kind of work, when you have days that you feel defeated, that it feels really hard, that's because it is. And I just give a huge thank you to anybody that is willing to dig in and feel those hard feelings and make sure that we're trying to do it the right way.
- [41:53]
John Toole
Stacy Denny, Director of Case Management Julie Austin, Director of Youth and Family Programs in the Greene County Juvenile Office we are so grateful for your commitment, your passion, and the sharing of your perspectives and experience and knowledge in today's broadcast. Thank you.
- [42:10]
Jodi Martin
Thank you for listening. Today we're excited to announce the recent release of our new Probation and Youth Justice System Review Guidebook. Developed for probation departments, courts and youth justice systems seeking to improve outcomes for the young people they serve. This new resource builds upon our System Review framework used in partnership with 38 states and local jurisdictions throughout the country to achieve substantial improvements in youth outcomes and system performance. The guidebook is available on our website, rfknrcjj.org as always, we would love to know what you think about the podcast. To share your ideas and input, please email us at rfknrcjfkcommunity.org and to stay connected, follow us on Twitter FKYouthjustice and on our LinkedIn page at RFK National Resource center for Juvenile Justice.