Implementing Strategies to Meet the Needs of Drug Endangered Children

The Edward Byrne Memorial Discretionary Grants Program, administered by the Office of Justice Programs' (OJP's) Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), furthers the Department's mission by assisting state and local jurisdictions in improving the criminal justice system and assisting communities in preventing drug abuse and crime. In fiscal year 2007, the Edward Byrne Memorial Discretionary Grants Program will focus on funding local, regional, and national efforts within six major categories: 1) targeting violent crime; 2) preventing crime and drug abuse; 3) enhancing local law enforcement; 4) enhancing local courts; 5) enhancing local corrections and offender reentry; and 6) facilitating justice information sharing. All categories combat, address, or otherwise respond to precipitous or extraordinary increases in crime, or in a type or types of crime.

The National Alliance for Drug Endangered Children's (NADEC) project, Implementing Strategies to Meet the Needs of Drug Endangered Children, is designed to support effective and sustainable state and community efforts to protect children, families, and communities from substance abuse problems. NADEC will establish a learning community bringing together the interests of policy, science, and practice to create community solutions. They will: disseminate "Blueprint,' a framework for defining how partners will individually and collectively conceptualize and solve drug-endangered children's challenges; create an electronic knowledge base for accumulating and disseminating evidence-based strategies related to drug endangered children; and, implement demonstration sites creating evidence-based solutions to the problems faced by drug endangered children. National DEC advocates intervention on behalf of these children and supports state services and local communities by helping to build efficient and effective strategies, tools, and resources that better leverage existing resources to assist these child victims.

CA/NCF