← Youth Justice Transformation in Action
Youth Justice Transformation in Action
Where Research Meets Practice: The Innovation Center for Youth Justice at JMU
00:44:52
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- [00:09]
A
Welcome to season five of Youth Justice Transformation in Action. We are the National Resource center for the Transformation of Youth justice, working to transform systems in partnership with people like you who are committed to improving outcomes for youth, families and communities. I'm Jody Martin, Deputy Executive Director.
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And I'm John Toole, Executive Director.
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A
This season, we're in conversation with leaders shaping the field of youth justice, from judges and system leaders to researchers and academic voices. Together, we'll examine the policies, practices and innovations driving change and what they mean for the future of youth justice. In today's episode, where research meets practice, the Innovation center for Youth justice at James Madison University, we're talking with Rita Podieva, the center's director, about the creation and evolution of the Innovation center, including its core pillars of activity, such as the Youth justice minor research symposia and the internship program, and how these efforts are helping shape the future of the field.
- [01:16]
B
Welcome to another episode of Youth Justice Transformation in Action, the start of season five. I'm pleased to welcome Professor Dr. Rita Poteva of James Madison University as our special guest today. Looking forward to hearing about her insights from her experience, her perspectives and her expertise, which has resulted in great partnership between Rita and the National Resource Center. Rita, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
- [01:45]
C
Yes. Hello. Hello, everyone. It's such a pleasure and an honor to be invited to be a participant in this podcast. I listen to every single one. I assign several to my classes. So youth justice minors at James Madison University are familiar with several of the episodes. So, my name is Rita Poteva. I'm an associate professor in the Department of Justice Studies at James Madison University, and I currently serve as the director for the Innovation center of Youth Justice, ICYJ for short. And it's an academic, research and educational center at jvu. Justice Studies department, where I'm a faculty member, is multidisciplinary. We focus on justice as a broader social concept, including systems and inequality policy, social context, and I'm a criminologist by training. And although for over a decade, my primary research interests were outside of the field of youth justice. I studied policing, gender based violence, capital punishment. I regularly taught a course on the juvenile justice system and juvenile delinquency. Gosh, for the past more than 12 years. So that interest has ultimately led me in 2021 to lobby for the creation of a specialized academic program in youth justice, Youth Justice Minor program at James Madison University. And in 2022, I wr the charter for an academic center focused on youth justice. ICYJ has opened its doors in 2023. And it's a really unique center. It's situated between two JMU colleges, Arts and Letters and Health and Behavioral Studies. And the center engages JMU faculty and faculty from other schools, faculty who come from half a dozen of different academic departments. We have allies from Political Science, Social Justice Studies, Education, Sociology, Psychology. So the center is really interdisciplinary. My partner in running the center for the last three years has been Ms. J.J. messier, who also serves as an independent consultant for the nrc. So all of the wonderful things that you hear about today about the center are also due to her efforts and her hard work. I have to acknowledge that we are equal partners. And also, neither of these endeavors, the minor or the center, would have been possible without the support of JMU leadership. I'm talking about the Deans of the College of Health and Behavioral Studies and the Dean of the College of Arts and Letters, and the support of my many amazing colleagues, and of course, the support of the nrc. Because, John Jody, your center, your practice network, is what made so many of the successes of the center possible.
- [04:51]
B
Thank you. Rita. Thanks for joining us. You are a terrific leader who has inspired so many of the students you teach and certainly the colleagues around you to join you in the collaboration that has helped direct the icyj. But you left a little something out of your introduction that I'd like to share with the audience. As a result of the role that you played with the Innovation center for Youth justice, In November of 2024, you awarded the James Madison University President's Purple Star Award for Embracing Innovation and Change. The awards given to those who demonstrate purposeful creativity through collaborative processes leading to knowledge creation, learning and excellence. I think that's an important part of your background. It certainly was something that we took note of, but we seem to already know those things about you. When we began our partnership with you. The history that you speak about with your teaching experience, your focus areas and your interests describes why you would certainly be qualified or have a preliminary interest in overseeing and directing the icyj. Were there other factors that really motivated you to take on this role and why you have continued to support the growth and expansion of the icyj.
- [06:04]
C
I feel like this part of my professional life has been a long time coming. I've had an interest in Youth justice ever since I started grad school in the United States in the year of 2001. And I can trace my. My interest back to a couple of very specific things. When I started grad school, a couple of faculty members in my program were doing research on boot Camps. So boot camps were that unique, interesting intervention that was extremely popular in the 90s, and they were promoted through a very compelling and politically powerful positive narrative. You know, the idea was that youth offend because they lack discipline and structure and respect for authority. So here you have boot camps that promise to instill self control and teach obedience and accountability and replace the chaotic lifestyle of these youth with order and routine. And I remember in being introduced to this information at the age of 22, learning about it in class and thinking to myself, how this approach, which, although somewhat reminiscent of my Soviet era childhood, how can this approach be rehabilitative? You know, I knew nothing about youth brain development, I knew nothing about training trauma, but I thought that, you know, if I was prompted to change myself through these means and that way, you know, discipline and rules and physical conditioning, I would not change, I would break, actually. And the faculty in my graduate program or doing a study that ultimately revealed the lack of effectiveness of this intervention. So that sparked my interest in, well, what. What works for youth and it's. And why. I also remember closely following the United States Supreme Court case of Roper versus Simmons, you know, reading the submitted briefs and reading the decision itself and being, you know, shocked that capital punishment for adolescents could have been accepted for so many years. And then, you know, at least for me, that decision was a watershed moment when I feel like we, as society, as a country, started to slowly, slowly roll back some of the many punitive reforms in youth justice. Legacy of the PUNITIVE ERA in preparation for this interview, I reflected on how come my career trajectory, despite this strong initial interest in youth justice, how come my research did not ultimately end up in this area in grad school or upon graduation? And the way I explain it to myself, again reflecting on something that happened 20 plus years ago, was that juvenile justice has historically received less policy and less scholarly attention and fewer resources than adult criminal justice because of the differences in public saliency, because of different political incentives, and because of institutional priorities. So I think that when I was a young scholar, when I was a graduate student, I sort of read the tea leaves for myself, wrongly, as I know now. And I thought, well, if I want to make a difference, if I want to build a career shaped by important meaningful inquiries, if I want to get funding for my research, if I want to teach classes that will be in demand, I should focus on adults, I should focus on the criminal justice system. And I was wrong. And, you know, the heart wants what it wants. So here we are a decade after I graduated, and I return to this role and it makes me feel fulfilled. And I see how all of those desires of making a difference moving forward, the field that importantly and meaningfully impacts people's lives. All of that has been possible for me in the field of youth justice. So to have an opportunity to shape an academic program that's close to my heart and to strategically deploy resources in support of youth justice research and support the work of practitioners in this field and support ultimately youth and families and communities through the work of the center. Right. What can be better? How can I pass that up?
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And it brings you here where you've been operating as the director for the center for the last three years. And I think it's fair to then follow up on that and say so for you. What inspired the creation of the ICYJ within jmu?
- [10:39]
C
So icyj, its mission is to serve as an active shared learning collaborative that promotes interdisciplinary innovation in the field of youth justice. Simply put, we are a space where students and faculty and researchers and practitioners and leaders, you know, from different disciplines from the commonwealth and nationally share expertise, start research projects, educate each other, collaborate on problem solving various youth justice, share challenges. And I think the story of how it started for me is a really cool one. And I, you know, and it lends itself very nicely to sort of an opening of a joke about two criminologists, a sociologist and a psychology professor walk into a bar and then, you know, things happen. Because for me it started with a happy hour. A happy hour that I attended with my justice studies colleagues, somebody from sociology, also somebody from psychology and social work. And we were sitting and talking and two of these colleagues of mine have just met a JMU alumni who had a decades long career in youth justice and a passion for transforming it. You, Mr. John Toole. And we were reflecting on this meeting that they've just had and we were talking about how different youth serving systems that are tasked with supporting the development and well being of young people, schools, juvenile justice system, child welfare, mental health services, how these different systems, despite having shared goals, they often operate in silos. They fail to collaborate in ways that could provide holistic and consistent care to youth. And interestingly, as educators, we talked about how, guess what, we perpetuate these silos in our classrooms. Honestly, John, I cringe when I think back how I taught my juvenile justice course years back, you know, maybe I devoted one lecture to school to prison pipeline. I never talked about child welfare system. I very briefly talked about mental health, but there was nothing about trauma, very little about adolescent brain development. Similarly My colleagues in social work admitted to not talking about juvenile justice at all when they teach child welfare classes. We also, faculty members at that table talked about how our alumni confessed to us, to several of us, that those of them who entered youth serving professions and youth serving agencies, they confessed they didn't feel very well prepared by the college classes that they've taken, that they had to learn a lot on the job. They also talked about how well they sort of ended up in juvenile justice or child welfare by happenstance, especially juvenile justice agencies. They didn't intentionally pursue it. They were not sure what they're getting themselves into. So it was not a consciously made career choice, but sort of, you know, a job that you get upon graduation. That day, we kind of walked away from the table dreaming small that we should change the way how we teach our respective classes. But then, you know, here we are 10 years, almost 10 years later, and we have a dedicated program for youth justice to better prepare students who have an interest working with system involved youth or youth who are at risk of becoming system involved so that they can make an educated choice and take meaningful steps in their careers. And we have a center dedicated to youth justice. But John, you were very involved in the creation of the minor and icyj. And I remember how you talked to us about how a growing number of jurisdictions across the country are taking the steps to reform their youth serving systems and how they are seeking assistance from scholars and seeking assistance from young colleagues, or they need future young colleagues who are trained in latest scientific evidence and best practices and how we sort of. We dream. You dreamt with us. We dreamt together about how cool it would be to involve students and to train students and get faculty involved in developing solutions for vulnerable youth. You know, solutions that are racially equitable, culturally responsive, trauma informed and community based. And here we are.
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B
Rita, that was a nice journey for me to go back there. The way you captured that. There's no question I have a great allegiance to my alma mater at jmu. It was that experience that I think helped shaped what has become 47 and a half years involved in the youth justice arena. And the time that I came to you guys was a time when I was frustrated by the absence of the implementation of the clear science, the clear research that at least gave us some additional tools to make decisions of how to support youth, how to protect community interests and safety, and how to provide for a positive future for every youth that became involved in the youth justice system. There was such a receptive audience at, at JMU and 10 years later, exactly as you stated, here we are. And what you've led over the past three years since we're able to find funding and launch the center is true to all those principles. That mission that you stated and all of the objectives that I would turn the audience to if they look on the icyj website, all of them are part of your address. So you've really got a comprehensive plan of driving this forward. I appreciate your leadership on that. You know, I just mentioned some of the objectives, some of the goals when I look at the four that are on the website. This strengthening the workforce has been a specific feature of one of the primary legislative supporters in the Virginia Legislature. And it's about developing a quality workforce. It's about the collaboration not just with us at the National Resource center, but with all those parties you spoke to. I think I just said objective three and four. I don't know if you want to comment again, but I think the audience would want to know what it is that you're driving forward based on some very clearly articulated objectives.
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C
I think the way that we look at the work of the center is that we have several pillars of activities facing four groups of our core constituents. First, we're a research center, so we support the work of Youth justice scholars and researchers. We generate research opportunities and produce scholarship that explores and supports innovation in the field of youth justice. Second, we are engaged in activities that are more directly practitioner focused and youth serving agencies focused. So we conduct provide research consultations, we provide assistance with grant writing to agencies for including community organizations that require some help. We offer program evaluation services and other forms of technical assistance. We conduct educational workshops and symposia events where scholars and practitioners intermingle and work together. Our third group of constituents, as you mentioned, students. So we're very much focused on educating the next generation of youth justice practitioners. And here is where I cyj supports the Youth justice minor at James Madison University. But honestly, the most important group of constituents, right? The reason why we exist and why we do the work we do, our main stakeholder are kids and their families. And we do this in the name of how you said, providing a positive future for kids and families.
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There's kind of three more areas that I'd want you to speak to during the course of this, and that's about the Youth justice minor degree. It's about the internships and it's about the focus on research.
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C
So just to iterate, the reason why Youth justice minor exists is because several people and my research has shown that traditional existing Majors Criminology, Criminal justice, Social work. Traditional college majors are not adequately preparing the workforce that youth justice systems actually need because responding effectively to youth who are struggling, youth at risk for offending. Responding effectively to them requires an interdisciplinary, developmentally informed and evidence based expertise. And currently those three things are underdeveloped in the traditional criminal justice and social work training. I'm not speaking for all programs, but just would My research has shown and youth justice employers increasingly want professionals who understand trauma informed care, who understand evidence based interventions, who understand community alternatives to incarceration, and who understand data and program evaluation. So we designed this specialized program for students who see themselves professionally or in other life contexts working with kids who are system involved or at risk of becoming system involved. The curriculum is interdisciplinary and highly customizable to students interests. So there's only one required intro course and then students choose courses from a variety of disciplines including psychology. So in psychology they could take developmental psychology or psychology of child abuse and neglect, school psychology, child psychopathology, sociology classes, sociology of race, Sociology of Education. The two important pillars of the minor are classes in justice studies and classes in, of course, in social work. Social work is a tremendously valuable contributor to running this minor. Second defining feature of the curriculum is that it prioritizes practical experience and professional exposure. So we have amazing youth justice practitioners come into our classrooms and guest lecture and run specialized workshops or even teach whole courses. In the minor we take students to professional symposia events to broaden their understanding of the field and to encourage early networking. There's an amazing summer internship program. And also yes, you mentioned a very unique capstone. The course is designed around problem based learning, experiential learning and design thinking. Basically, students, groups of students, they're paired with a jurisdiction or an agency that presents them with a difficult problem. Something that the agency or jurisdiction has been struggling with for a while. Something that doesn't have a single correct answer. So for example, students are asked to explore how come girls penetrate deeper into the system for the same, let's say more minor offenses compared to boys and young men. What should trauma informed care look like specifically when we're talking about youth probation or asked to help a jurisdiction figure out lack of success in deploying in home services as opposed to referring kids to out of home placement for services. And another problem that students are working on currently in the capstone you is how education services are offered in a juvenile detention facility, how they can be improved to combat recidivism, and whether a computer based instruction approach is beneficial for Kids in the system. So difficult questions, difficult topics, no easy solution. And students spend a semester doing research, not just desk research, looking up articles and scouring the Internet, but actually talking to stakeholders. So students are conducting upwards of 15 interviews and they are asked to propose a number of hopefully innovative outside of the box solutions, AKA prototypes to help move the needle in a positive direction on these issues. Let me tell you, thinking outside the box is hard, but you know, if anyone can do it, it will be students who maybe are not yet confined and buried under a lot of the practical considerations that, you know, jurisdictions are firmly, so firmly rooted in.
- [23:45]
B
So Rita, there's, there's so many foundations of what you've just spoken to that are critical to future success in transforming youth justice. First, what drew me to JMU to start engaging about the possibility that we could look at a creation of a center? One of those pillars was just what you've described. And it's create a workforce that embraces that research based foundations, principles and practices emerging from those can be a valuable instrument in addressing youth who are impacted by the youth justice system. You're teaching real life practical opportunities in this curriculum from start to finish. And it's preparing the students from the center to be contributors to the workforce in the system. It's an amazing curriculum. I'm a little biased, but we've seen the results and that you and I can both speak to about how the workforce is getting populated by some of your students with these skills. Part of that experience is an internship program that you have created with a slate of activities that once again makes it a very practical experience. The demand is that it's practical, it's interactive, it's engaged, and it has high expectations. Can you speak about that internship program?
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Very special, very unique internship program has been made possible by Virginia State legislature that allocated funds to support the work of the center. And the bulk of these funds goes towards support of this paid internship program. It's a summer program. Students spend 180 hours, usually six weeks in a jurisdiction, typically in a juvenile court in some jurisdiction, working, learning, observing, hopefully usefully, valuably contributing and supporting the work of professionals in these jurisdictions. And there are two pillars of this program and how we select and recruit the sites. We are looking for sites that are able to provide a diversity of practical experiences. So a diversity of activities. Because in the past I've overseen internship programs at another institution where a student is basically tasked with the same activity over and over and over again. And oftentimes it's very mundane and not that professionally enlightening or moving the knowledge or moving the development. But we are asking sites to provide a diversity of experiences. I have these slate of activities that it involves being exposed to judges and sitting in on court hearings, talking with law enforcement, shadowing probation officers, talking to service providers and sitting in or maybe even conducting once some experience is obtained, assessment, youth assessment. And it varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction as to what they're able to expose students to. And it's totally fine. All we're asking that it's the list of activities is as broad as possible. What makes the program even more special and so valuable in my eyes is the type of relationship that students develop with their site hosts. And this is what we very politely ask the site hosts to provide, which is some aspect of mentorship. So please have a conversation with students what they have learned that day or seen that day and answer their questions, maybe ask them questions so that what makes for a truly valuable learning experience. And I've seen it in students reflection how much it means to them to have their voice heard, to be given positive feedback and validation to some of the good questions that they ask or some of the maybe astute observations that they have. Especially when it comes from highly regarded, knowledgeable, highly experienced experts in the field. It contributes not just to professional growth, but to a lot of personal growth and growth and confidence.
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Where have these internships been sponsored?
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We have been tremendously fortunate to work with Juvenile Probation Office for Lancaster county in Lincoln, Nebraska, Cook County Juvenile Probation and Court Services in Chicago, Illinois. Our students have gone to Juvenile court services in King County Superior Court and that is in Seattle, Washington. We worked with a Youth and Family Resource center in Memphis. Students have done their internship in Cobb County Juvenile Court Services in Marietta, Georgia. Stateside in Virginia, we work with Fairfax County Juvenile Domestic Relations District Court and Alexandria Department of Juvenile Justice. Actually more of our students leave the state for this experience. And the cool thing is that because youth justice systems across jurisdictions have so much variety and might very well differ from each other a lot, these students then bring back what they learned and share their knowledge with the rest of the youth justice cohort, which contributes to a so much richer understanding of the field for everyone. Even for those who did not take this internship opportunity when seeking to launch
- [29:37]
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this center, I was given access to the president of the university. When I was able to tell him these internships, contemplated locations around the country and the reach of our partnership with the ICT NCYJ at JMU would provide access to those sites. I think that triggered his Extreme excitement and investment in supporting the center moving forward. And you have brought these real life experiences right to the forefront that has provided such a great experience for the students. And I think these experiences have accrued in a positive way to the sites and the professionals with whom they've interacted as well. I'm going to have to shift a little bit to make sure we capture the research component of this. This was one of the five original pillars that you've brought to life that I believe we dreamed of. And that was to have a partnership with an academic institution who was emphasizing at the time being designated in R2 Research University, where you're emphasizing that research reach and for us to have a partner that might be able to bring to life relevant new. An examination of existing research findings around Youth justice was extremely exciting. Tell us a little bit about how you've tried to develop that research component of the center.
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C
So an extremely important aspect of the Center's activity and what we believe is that the future of truly valuable Youth justice research is at the very least interdisciplinary and ideally transdisciplinary. And I'll explain in a minute the difference between these two. But basically single discipline approaches, they oversimplify causes, they produce narrow interventions, they sometimes miss unintended consequences, which is, I think this is why boot camps were so harmful. This is how we got ineffective programs like boot camps is because of single discipline approaches that focus just like only on punishment, only on accountability. And at the very least, youth justice research must be interdisciplinary because youth offending is a multidimensional phenomenon that's shaped by, yes, social environments, but also developmental processes, by institutional responses, by structural conditions that kids exist and live in. And no single discipline can adequately explain or address the intersection of these factors. So we strive to integrate insights from psychology, sociology, criminology, law, public health. You know, we at the center have an ongoing collaboration as part of a research network that unites researchers and scholars from different institutions, also come from different disciplinary backgrounds, because we are seeking for a more comprehensive understanding of both offending desistance and effective interventions or research to support the design of more effective and equitable interventions. Transdisciplinarity, on the other hand, goes a step further. And this is what we're working towards. Transdisciplinarity blends and transcends disciplinary boundaries. And importantly, it incorporates practitioners and it incorporates the insights of lived experience to create new frameworks and new approaches. And this is what we strive towards. So we're looking at researchers, practitioners, community members, system involved youth to work together to co produce knowledge, the boundaries between disciplines will blur. So we're basically trying to reconfigure how knowledge is produced and applied. You know, it requires building bridges between research and practice.
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What you just described, Rita, was a commitment to research that can retain the strengths while having the courage to innovate, to create new research that might improve practical application of the methods that we use to work with youth and bring about the change that we would want as well as bring about the change in the system practices. Truly giving meaning to the Innovation center for Youth Justice. There's no question with our commitment to research foundations at the NRC that the partnership with the ICYJ is natural. JMU brings an array of experienced researchers. As a part of your staff, as a part of your collaboration. I think our partnership has allowed us to reach out to researchers, renowned researchers from across the country, certainly across the Commonwealth of Virginia, and making a specific commitment to the HBCUs where we can feature the staff and the researchers, the HBCUs in Maryland and the Maryland, D.C. virginia area as well. Rita, how has the ICYJ program evolved and grown since its inception three plus years ago?
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First of all, the minor is growing. We started with a small cohort of 15 students. Now we've got quadrupled that number and we've already graduated a whole bunch of people. We are getting ready to send out the largest cohort of interns. Folks are reaching out to us practitioners, you know, agencies, either with an offer of assistance, so let us host an intern, let us do a guest lecture or a workshop or maybe even teach a whole course or reaching out for. They're seeking our assistance for consultations or for grant writing. So the reputation, reputation of the center is really growing. We are taking steps to start some large scale research and evaluation projects, especially since we have colleagues at JMU who are experienced evaluators. We also have colleagues at jmu. I'm talking about the Medicine center for Community Development. So the center has developed a sophisticated, highly customizable data management system that youth agencies could use to fulfill their data collection and tracking needs and then make evaluation research essentially a breeze for researchers. But importantly, looking towards the future, I'm really looking forward towards two things. I'm looking forward to work more directly with kids and families with youth who are system involved or at risk of becoming system involved. And we brainstormed a lot of different ideas of how we might do this. We could start a mentorship program and get JMU students involved, working with kids, or perhaps, you know, a scholarship for kids to come study at JMU is in the future so can start serving more directly the constituency that everything else is done in the name of. I'm also looking forward to bringing into the fold more directly some of our alumni because, you know, time has come. We have alumni now. You've justice minors students who've graduated in the past are either already working in various youth serving agencies and by the way, they, you know, some of them were able to get a job because of the unique experiences offered in the center. Some of them went back to their internship sites and have applied to or gotten a job there or they got a job through attending some of the networking events. Some students are, you know, completing graduate program work. So maybe they will be completely become future scholars and maybe, you know, future colleagues in academia or future researchers. So definitely looking forward to working with some of the students who've graduated with a youth justice minor degree because they have been amazing.
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B
What you've also just described, Rita, in speaking about the evolution is that it benefits from a leader like you who recognizes the necessity of the integration of academia and research in practice and it must be intersected, intertwined for the student experience to be leaving JMU and impacting the field. I think that's extraordinary and you've managed to take those five original pillars at the Innovation center and make all of them real. The center is proving to be a valuable source to leaders in the field, to supervisors and managers who may benefit from hiring these young people who are coming out of the Innovation center and in the very near future benefiting from the kind of research that a university like JMU can produce to inform how we continue to improve and transform the youth justice system. I think I'll just shift to a more the 30,000 foot for you now with all that experience, with all of the impact that you've had. If you could change one thing about youth justice, Rita, what would that be?
- [38:29]
C
Oh, I've heard so many good answers to this question. Of course there are many things I would like to change, but I thought I would speak about how I would love to make it happen that states prioritize allocating funds to support individualized approach to justice involved youth. I think it was Mark Warner in one of your podcasts who said that if only I could give a kid an adult who cares about them. I echo that and I truly believe that individualized approach is where the solutions are. That's what produces results. Interventions that are tailored to specific person, to a specific young person, their risks, their strengths, their development, their context. Because two youth committing the same offense may require very different responses depending on where they are developmentally and the combination of risk factors and strengths and needs that they have. However, budgetary realities are such that, you know, youth justice is much smaller than criminal justice. It's a smaller fiscal priority. It's more vulnerable to cuts and to restructuring. So I just want, I don't. Policymakers, people in charge, to realize how youth justice plays such a critical role in shaping life course long outcomes. You know, we know that a very small group of people, youth, account for a large share of serious, persistent offending. We know that without intervention, some youth follow trajectories into chronic adult offending. We know that intervening earlier is cheaper than responding later. And we know what works. And we know that, you know, some justice, youth justice interventions can actually be harmful. Basically, prioritizing spending on youth justice to craft individualized approaches is what I would advocate because in the long term, it would save so much. Investing early on is very cost effective than building responses later on when kids grow up. And that heavy backpack of cumulative continuity becomes very heavy. And it's getting increasingly more difficult the older we are to change our lives and, you know, change life trajectories.
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Amen to that. Yes, we all recognize there are workforce challenges. Every jurisdiction in which we work, we hear that and we acknowledge that because that's the truth. But we're not completely devoid of those resources. And the point you make, amplified by Mark Werner's comments, a member of our practice network and one of our previous guests, is that we can still apply one of the most valuable resources to every youth, and that's us. I spoke with a group in Ohio earlier this week. Two had eight counties who had been speaking about the dearth of resources to serve the complex needs of these youth. And yet during that conversation with those groups of professionals, they were acknowledging that they played an important role in the direct service to that young person. And there's research to support that as well. So even in an environment where we wish there was greater wisdom about the focus of resources for our families and our youth, we still have access to ourselves as providing a positive support for young people. And if we allow that to be research informed, driven by some tools, some instruments, some skills that are supported by the research, we'll experience more and more success that benefits the young people and their communities.
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C
And John, I think actually this brings me to a perfect last message that I would say is when you say, even in the circumstances of dearth of financial resources, they're still us. Well, I can tell you that there are bright, motivated future us that are right now graduating and will be entering child welfare and youth justice workforce continuously as a result of ICYJ's work. They are smart, they are passionate, they are courageous and innovative and they're courageous and passionate. Not so much. You know, yes, there's still some youthful optimism and naivete there, but they're also choosing this work with eyes wide open. They are educated and understand what the work entails and they are willing and happy to do it. And just we're making sure, you know, NRC and ICYJ are making sure that they hit the ground running and can be meaningfully supportive, can be of meaningful support to those of you in the field who are listening to this podcast.
- [43:09]
B
There's no better way to finish any of the messaging than be positive, which I think you and I share positive belief about where we will go in this work. Let me close just by saying Dr. Rita Poteva, Associate professor in the Department of Justice Studies at JMU and fortunately the Center Director for the Innovation center for Youth justice, it has been a pleasure to feature you, your wisdom, your knowledge, your experience and obviously your passion for this work in our podcast episode today.
- [43:39]
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Thank you, thank you very much. Thank you,
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thank you for listening today. Before we go, a quick update. Our new website has launched. It features improved navigation, updated content and new tools to better support the field while continuing to offer the trusted resources you rely on. You can find it@nrctyj.org as always, we'd love to hear what you think about the podcast. To share your ideas and feedback, email us at nrctyjfkcommunity. And to stay connected, follow us on LinkedIn the National Resource center for the Transformation of Youth Justice.
- [44:40]
B
Sa.