Award Information
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2021, $176,863)
The goals of the project are to decrease the number of expulsions of juveniles from Anne Arundel County schools and to decrease the numbers of incarcerated juveniles in Anne Arundel County, while at the same time reducing juvenile crime and increasing safety within the county’s schools and community.
Deliverables:
a. Provide counseling and mentorship to twenty (20) students per month.
b. Connect twenty (20) students per month to holistic services, such as the Anne Arundel County School’s behavioral support services, mental health evaluations and treatment, and trauma informed therapy.
c. Prosecutors and project social work staff identify an additional ten (10) at risk juveniles per quarter from within the juvenile justice system to be assessed for counseling and referral services.
Project staff will collect data regarding all participants inclusive of demographic information and maintain a log of all participants served. Data shall be entered into the SAO electronic data management system, Prosecutor by Karpel (PbK). The project director shall review data each month and assess the project’s effectiveness and ability to meet the project’s goals and objectives.
Primary Activities:
The project will build a collaborative apparatus between the Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney’s Office (SAO) and Anne Arundel County Crisis Response Team, (AACCRT). AACCRT will rapidly identify juvenile offenders in crisis and will engage the services of the project social worker, who will provide a trauma informed holistic response inclusive of counseling, mental health referral and treatment, substance abuse addiction referral and treatment and family counseling. The project social worker will also promote participation in Anne Arundel County behavioral support programs, which help students and their parents confront the challenges of adolescent drug and alcohol use, as well as assists students and their parents to create positive changes to maintain a safe, nonviolent lifestyle for success in school and in life.
In addition the SAO juvenile prosecution team and project social worker will collaborate to identify juveniles most at risk in the juvenile justice system for inclusion in project services.