Aleut Community of St. Paul Island Tribal Government 2023 CTAS Tribal Youth Program Initiative

The Aleut Community of St. Paul Island Tribal Government (ACSPI) seeks to address a significant rise in youth delinquency and truancy within their community. Noting this trend and identifying a possible root cause of the significant rise of delinquency, the Tribal court plans to put in place methods, policies, procedures, and supports to address the issue while at the same time empowering families and individual youth, providing comprehensive services with the goal of impacting the rate of delinquency, demonstrating a direct impact on truancy, and demonstrating a documented impact on youth educational reentry. Individual court navigators will be assigned to youth within the court system and be paired with case managers from the Bering Sea Campus who will coordinate efforts to develop comprehensive case plans to address education, socioeconomic, and other identified goals and needs for individuals and families. The Bering Sea Campus academic curriculum team will develop policies and procedures that will be implemented into the Pribilof school district, strengthening their link into Tribal court systems, and provide a formal referral pathway for youth that starts at the point truancy initially occurs, allowing intersection prior to manifestation of greater issues. This will impact both educational outcomes and rates of youth delinquency. As current individuals within the court system are provided comprehensive services, the community seeks to demonstrate an impact in the reoccurrence of offenses and show reentry into education and secondary programs (such as GED and other programs). The program will provide funding for a formal training curriculum that will be utilized by project staff to ensure interactions are consistent with Tribal values; include a site-specific, culturally relevant perspective; and allow ACSPI to provide a resource that sustains the program capacity and staffing beyond the initial period of performance of this project.