FY 2022-2023 Byrne State Crisis Intervention Program (SCIP) Grantee Orientation Webinar

A PDF of the transcript is also available.

DARYL FOX: Good afternoon, everyone. And welcome to today's webinar, “FY 2022-2023 Byrne State Crisis Intervention Program Grantee Orientation Webinar,” hosted by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. At this time, it's my pleasure to introduce Erin Pfeltz, Division Chief within the Bureau of Justice Assistance for welcoming remarks and to begin the presentation. Erin?

ERIN PFELTZ: Thank you so much, Daryl. Welcome, everyone, to the FY 2022-2023, Byrne State Crisis Intervention Program Grantee Orientation Webinar. My name is Erin Pfeltz and I'm a division chief with BJA. Joining me today are Aja Pappas, Jeannine Bulbulia, Michelle White, and Tenzing Lahdon, all from BJA. Next slide, please.

Before digging into the details on the SCIP program, I wanted to provide a quick overview to BJA and its place in the Office of Justice Programs. OJP provides grant funding, training, research, and statistics to the criminal justice community, and is one of the three grant-making components of the Department of Justice along with OVW and the COPS office. BJA is one of the six components within OJP. Next slide.

BJA's mission is to provide leadership and services in grant administration and criminal justice policy development to support state, local, and Tribal justice strategies to achieve safer communities. BJA works with communities, governments, and nonprofit organizations to reduce crime, recidivism, and unnecessary confinement, and promote a safe and fair criminal justice system. Next slide.

BJA Director Moore was appointment by President Biden in February 2022, and he leads BJA's programmatic and policy efforts on providing a wide range of resources including training and technical assistance to law enforcement courts, corrections, treatment, reentry, justice information sharing, and community-based partners to address chronic and emerging criminal justice challenges nationwide. Within BJA, he oversees our four components: the Policy Office, which provides national leadership to criminal justice organizations that partner with BJA to identify effective program models for replication and infuse data-driven, evidence-based strategies into operational models, practices, and programs; the Programs Office, which administers state, local, tribal, and territorial grant programs, and acts as BJA's direct line of communication to state's local jurisdictions, territories, and tribal governments by providing customer-focused grants management support and careful stewardship over federal funds; the Operations Office, which coordinates all communications and formulates and executes the budget, manages contracts, measures grantee performance, and provides administrative support to BJA; and our Public Safety Officer Benefits Office, which provides death and education benefits to survivors of fallen law enforcement officers, firefighters, and other public safety officers, and disability benefits to officers catastrophically injured in the line of duty. Next slide, please.

These four components support the five major strategic focus areas for BJA, which include improving public safety through measures which build trust with the community and ensure an effective criminal justice system. Reduction in recidivism and prevention of unnecessary confinement and interactions within the criminal justice system. Integration of evidence-based, research-driven strategies into the day-to-day operations of BJA and the programs BJA administers and supports. Increasing program effectiveness with a renewed emphasis on data analysis, information sharing, and performance management, and ensuring organizational excellence through outstanding administration and oversight of all of BJA's strategic investments. And BJA—next slide, please.

And BJA supports this work through the following activities. Funding, investing diverse funding streams to accomplish goals, research, development, and deliverance of what works, the creation of tools and products to build capacity and improve outcomes, and partnering, consulting, connecting, and convening. Next slide.

And our agenda today for the Byrne SCIP orientation, we're going to provide a program overview, discuss the allowable activities and unallowable costs, cover the post-award program requirement, discuss coordination and evaluation, and finally review program resources. Next slide.

A little bit of background on the Byrne SCIP program. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act appropriated $150 million per year for five years (FY 2022 through FY 2026) specifically for the new state crisis intervention court proceedings and related program initiatives program area. To date, BJA has made 51 awards for a total of over $238 million under the FY 22-23 Byrne SCIP. And just a reminder here, the Byrne State Crisis Intervention Program funds are not JAG funds, they're a separate program. Next slide.

Next, we're going to talk about a few allowable activities and unallowable activities within the program. Next slide.

Under Byrne SCIP, the Extreme Risk Protection Order Programs are an allowable activity, and that includes implementing ERPO programs and training those implementing such programs including training judiciary and court staff, training family members, training first responders. It also includes communication, education, and public awareness. However, we do want to include the reminder that funds may not be used either directly or indirectly to support the enactment, repeal, modification, or adoption of any law, regulation, or policy at any level of government. Other allowable activities include specialized court-based programs such as drugs, mental health, and veterans treatment courts, including those that specifically accepts clients with firearm violations. Behavioral health deflection for those at risk to themselves or others, and funding for law enforcement agencies to safely store, track, and return relinquished guns.

Unallowable Costs. So, in addition to the unallowable costs identified in the DOJ Grants Financial Guide, award funds may not be used for any of the following. Prizes, rewards, entertainment, trinkets, or any type of monetary inventive, food and beverage. And this is not referring to per diem related to travel. This is providing food and beverage. Client stipends, gift cards, unmanned aircraft systems including any accompanying accessories, or supplanting state or local funds. We also wanted to make a special reference to the restriction on lobbying. In general, as a matter of federal law, funds may not be used either directly or indirectly to support the enactment, repeal, modification, or adoption of any law, regulation, or policy at any level of government. Should any question arise as to whether a particular use of award funds might fall into this prohibition, please contact BJA for guidance and do not proceed without the expressed prior written approval of BJA. Recipients and subrecipients must comply with the provisions in the law, and we also recommend that you look at chapter 2.1 of the DOJ Grants Financial Guide for more specifics about restrictions on lobbying. And again, I would emphasize if at any point you are unsure, please, please reach out to BJA, and we'll be happy to help. Next slide.

Next, we're going to move into the post-award program requirements. We've now come to the first of our polling questions for today. We're going to take a few seconds to gather some results. If you aren't seeing the poll pop up, please go ahead, feel free to put your answer in the chat. But our first polling question, "Is your organization also the SAA for the Byrne JAG award?" Yes, we manage both Byrne JAG and Byrne SCIP. Or no, a different organization is the SAA for Byrne JAG. And so please feel free, respond to the poll, enter response into the chat. We'll give it a few more seconds. Daryl, you want to go ahead and close the poll? Great. Thank you all for sharing. We know there are a variety of types of experience within this program. Go to the next slide.
This slide provides a broad overview of the program requirement. And we're going to dig deeper into each of these elements moving forward in the presentation, but we thought it would be helpful to see everything all together on one slide. The Crisis Intervention Advisory Board, so this board is designed to inform and guide the state's related gun violence reduction programs and initiatives. The State Crisis Intervention Program Plan and Budget which must be expressly approved by BJA post-award. Pass through requirements are required direct local pass-through and less than 10,000 pass-through. Post-award Authorization of Subawards. All subawards must be expressly authorized by BJA post-award. Coordination and Evaluation. Requirements to cooperate with BJA and its training and technical assistance providers. Obligations, Expenditures, and Draw Downs. Funds may be obligated once awards have been offered and accepted, and any award conditions prohibiting obligations have been cleared, including the post-award approval of the program plan and budget and performance reporting. Quarterly performance measure reports are submitted through the BJA's PMT system and semi-annual progress reports are submitted through JustGrants. Like I said, we'll go into these elements in more detail in future slides. Next slide.

The Crisis Intervention Advisory Board. So the purpose of this board is to inform and guide the state's gun violence reduction programs and initiatives. It must include representatives from law enforcement, the community, courts, prosecutions, behavioral health providers, victim services, and legal counsel. And the board representatives listed above are a minimum requirement. States should ensure that representatives from the various potential beneficiaries of this funding are fairly represented. Existing advisory boards, task forces, working groups, committees, et cetera, can meet the advisory board requirement if that existing entity has representatives that meet the mandatory members listed above. And we do expect advisory boards to approve and be aware of all changes associated with the award. Next slide.

We've now come to our second poll question. As before, please feel free to respond in the polling feature once it pops up or in the chat. And so the question here is, "Are you using an existing board to meet the Crisis Intervention Advisory Board requirement?" Yes, the Advisory Board has already met. Yes, but the Advisory Board has not yet met. No, we're developing a new Board and but have scheduled or held the first meeting. And no, we are in the process of developing a new Board.

And if you're responding in the chat, make sure to go ahead and introduce yourself so that you can see who's commenting. Introduce yourself, your state, your organization. Let's go ahead and close the poll. And thank you. We can see projects are at different places as things get up and going. So next, I'm going to turn it over to Aja Pappas who's going to cover more of the post-award requirements and the approval of the program and budget plans.

AJA PAPPAS: Thank you, Erin. Good afternoon, I'm Aja Pappas, I'm a state policy advisor with BJA. As Erin stated, I'm going to continue talking about some program requirements, specifically post-award. So I'm going to talk about the program and budget plans. The program and budget plan must be expressly approved by BJA post-award. And you guys are going to do this by submitting a Grant Award Modification, also known as a GAM. It will use our JustGrants system. When you submit to this, you will use the programmatic costs GAM. You will mark other and you will put Byrne SCIP Program and Budget Plan in the available textbox. When submitting this GAM, please make sure you are including the following. You want to include the Program Plan, that content would include goals for the use of the Byrne SCIP funds, the process for making your subawards. Also want to include your Budget Detail Worksheet, also known as a BDW. And that will be your budget and narrative that will be broken down showing all costs to include admin cost and the required pass-through. You will include the Advisory Board Description, describing the membership, and the governance structure of your advisory board. We would also like to ensure that you are including the Advisory Board Plan and Approval letter. This letter needs to make sure that it's confirming the coordination and the development of the program plan and budget. We want to ensure that there is clear confirmation that there was coordination between the recipient and the board. Make sure there is a statement that the board approves the submitted plan. Please ensure it's on letterhead and include all available signatures from the advisory board. As a note, the program and budget plan withholding condition will allow obligations not to exceed 20,000 for the sole purpose of developing the program and budget plans in coordination with your Crisis Intervention Advisory Board. Next slide.

Pass-through requirements. As you're aware, there are a few pass-through requirements with Byrne SCIP. Where applicable, states must pass through the 40% portion to local government. The 40% portion is comprised of the share of funds, proportionately decreased, that was available for direct local JAG awards in Fiscal Year 2021 and Fiscal Year 2022. And the share of funds proportionately decreased, that was added to the state share in Fiscal 2021 and Fiscal Year 2022 for less-than-$10,000 jurisdictions. There are two types of pass-through, your direct local and less-than-$10,000. FY 2022 and FY 2023 allocations can be found by following that link. Next slide.

For direct local pass-through, the portion of funds that were allocated for this as I stated before, from the FY 2021 and FY 2022 JAG program that was proportionately decreased by the amount of funds available for Byrne SCIP. These funds must be passed through to units of local government. For the purpose of Byrne SCIP, a unit of local government is defined as a city, county, township, town, or certain federally recognized American Indian tribes. States are not required to pass funds through to every unit of local government that was eligible for a direct local JAG award in Fiscal Year 2021 and/or Fiscal Year 2022. The states do have discretion on the use of the direct local pass-through funds, and that is going to be determined by the Crisis
Intervention Advisory Board. And this pass-through is required and is not eligible for a waiver. Next slide.

The Less-than-$10,000 Pass-through consist of funds for those units of local government that were not eligible to receive a direct JAG aware in Fiscal Year '21 and/or Fiscal Year '22 proportionately decreased by the amount of funds available for Byrne SCIP. These units of local government are known as the less-than-$10,000 jurisdictions. States must provide these funds to one or more less-than-$10,000 jurisdictions or to state courts that provide criminal justice and civil justice services for the less-than-$10,000 jurisdictions within that state and/or subaward the funds to such jurisdictions. The less-than-$10,000 pass-through is eligible for a waiver. And in the upcoming slides, I will explain how to request that waiver. Next slide.

For the less-than-$10,000 pass-through, as informed by your Crisis Intervention Advisory Board, your state has discretion to utilize the less-than-$10,000 pass-through funding in several ways. You can fund one less-than-$10,000 jurisdiction. You can fund multiple less-than-$10,000 jurisdictions. You may fund state courts that provide criminal justice and civil justice services to the less-than-$10,000 jurisdictions within your state. You may fund a combination of less-than-$10,000 jurisdictions and state courts that provide criminal justice and civil justice services within that less-than-$10,000 jurisdiction, $10,000 jurisdictions within the state. You may request a waiver to retain the less-than-$10,000 funds or a portion thereof at the state level for a project that will directly benefit that specific $10,000 jurisdiction. Or you may do any combination of one through five that I just explained. Next slide.

The process for the waiver. So, to request a waiver, you will need to ensure that the state-administered project will directly benefit a unit of local government and one unit or more of local government voluntarily agrees and acknowledges in appropriate written certification that the specified amount of state administered funds would directly benefit the unit of local government in question and agrees that funding the project at the state level is in the best interest of the local government unit. And waivers must receive express approval from BJA via Grant Award Modification, also known as a GAM, post-award. Next slide.

So how do you do the waiver process? In order to request a waiver for the less-than pass-through, you are going to use, again, the JustGrants system. You’re going to submit a programmatic cost GAM. You will mark it other and you will write in the textbox, Byrne SCIP pass-through waiver. You will submit with the GAM on agency letterhead a letter that will be signed by the Byrne SCIP authorized representative. And you are going to ensure that you are providing a summary of the project or projects and stipulating that the projects will directly benefit one or more units of local government. Please ensure that letter identifies the specific units of local government that will benefit from the state administered projects and attach the certification from the units of local government. Next.

Federal Authorization of Subawards. All of your subawards must be expressly approved by BJA post-award. Again, you guessed it, via a GAM, Grant Award Modification. Please note that even if the proposed subaward is clearly identified in your Budget Detailed Worksheet or BDW, or the narrative in the application that was approved by OJP, that you still must receive written authorization from BJA by submitting a GAM. Request for subaward authorization will be submitted in the JustGrants system via a GAM after formation and documentation of your Crisis Intervention Advisory Board, and BJA's approval of the program plan and budget and removal of the withholding condition. So prior to submitting the authorization for subaward, please ensure again that the formation and documentation of the Crisis Intervention Advisory Board was done and that we have approved your program plan and budget. Next slide.

The GAM process again will be done in the JustGrants system. You will select programmatic scope change GAM, staff changes. You will select staff changes. And when you submit the GAM, please ensure on the letter that you submit a letter on agency letterhead signed by the Byrne SCIP authorized representative. Please ensure that this letter summarizes the selection process for the subawards, including--that is including the request, list the one or more units of local government that will be issued subawards along with their proposed award amounts and project periods, and include a description of the proposed subawards and the subawards budget. Next slide.

Obligations and Expenditures. So your funds may not be obligated. Your funds may be obligated once awards have been offered and accepted and any award conditions prohibiting obligations have been cleared, including the post-award approval of the program plan and budget. So again, ensure that you have met those conditions before you obligate those funds. The program and budget plan withholding condition will allow obligations not to exceed 20,000 for the sole purpose of developing the program and budget plans in coordination with the Crisis Intervention Advisory Board. Next slide.

Draw Downs. Your drawdowns from your awarded funds must be based upon the immediate disbursement or reimbursement requirements. Funds will not be paid in a lump sum, but rather will be disbursed over time as program costs are incurred or anticipated. Drawdown requests should be time to ensure that federal cash on hand is the minimum needed for disbursements or reimbursements to be made immediately or within 10 days. If not spent or disbursed within 10 days, funds must be returned to the awarding agency. Please note the immediate disbursement and reimbursement requirement applies to all BJA awards except for JAG Formula Awards and Coronavirus Emergency Supplemental Funding Grants. Next slide.

Another program requirement is the coordination and evaluation requirement. So you are required to cooperate with BJA and its training and technical assistance providers, also known as TTA providers, to ensure that programs funded by Byrne SCIP are designated to protect the constitutional rights of the individuals. Requirement to cooperate with the statutorily required evaluation activities as part of the terms and conditions of the award. And applicants may budget and allocate grant funding to meet the specific research and programmatic requirements regarding Effectiveness of the Crisis Intervention Program or ERPO initiative in preventing violence and suicide. Measures that have been taken to safeguard the constitutional rights of an individual subject to a crisis intervention program or ERPO initiative and use of the grant funds for research partner are encouraged. Next slide.

At this time, I'm going to hand over the presentation to the PMT team.

JEANNINE BULBULIA: Thank you. This section of the presentation will cover several topics related to performance management at BJA. I will discuss requirements for data reporting, including what you need to report, where reporting happens, when reporting is due throughout the year, and how to report data. I will also discuss some best practices for goal setting as well as some helpful tips. Finally, I will share contact information and resources for you to get in touch with us if you need assistance with your performance measures or reporting at any time. Next slide.

Let's start with what is Performance Management at BJA? Performance management is the process by which grantees regularly collect data on their grant activities to determine whether they're implementing activities as intended and achieving their desired goals and objectives. Using performance measures that capture input, output, and outcomes over time enables pre and post comparisons that can be used to assess change. BJA has established performance measures for each grant program. These measures were included in the original solicitation that you responded to. We will also review the specifics of your program's unique questionnaire during this orientation. You can find additional information and several resources on the OJP Grant Performance Measurement and Progress Reporting information portal at the website provided on this slide. Next slide, please.

Why did BJA use Performance Measures? Performance measures have many purposes and benefits to your program and for BJA. They allow BJA to look at your program holistically as well as at a local level to identify areas of success as well as potential opportunities for improvement. This also allows BJA to target training and technical assistance resources to subjects and localities that need them the most. Furthermore, BJA routinely receives data calls and requests sometimes from Congress or the White House, and relies primarily on the data provided by grantees during reporting periods to respond to these inquiries. BJA and OJP regularly track progress towards goals and reports using annual key performance indicators to leadership during budget formulations as well as ongoing yearly monitoring. Lastly, DOJ is required to comply with the reported requirements of federal law. Performance measures also provide many benefits to grantees and their programs. You should be systematically monitoring performance measures to include some of the data BJA collects as well as your own programmatic data to help identify successes in areas for continuous improvement. Monitoring performance measures can help you proactively address challenges and generate evidence that you are meeting your goals. This can lead to sustainability and continued resources advocacy for your programs. Next slide, please. Now we’ll talk about the what, where, when, and how of reporting requirements. Next slide.

There are two required sources of data that you will use to report, performance measures and narrative questions. The performance measure questions for your program are a series of questions that measure outcomes of grant activities and demonstrate the accomplishment of goals and objectives of BJA's programs. Grantees report on performance measures during each quarterly reporting period. A series of narrative questions related to the grantees’ specific goals, objectives, barriers, and successes are also provided to grantees to be used for data reporting. These narrative questions are only reported in January and July. Next slide, please.

Where Do I Report? The Performance Measurement Tool, also known as the PMT, is an online data collection tool for OJP's grant recipients. It is structured as an online questionnaire and is available year round. The PMT contains a lot of information and tools to assist you in your reporting. You can access the PMT by following a link on this page. If you are new to reporting, you should have received a welcome email with directions on how to create an account and access the PMT. Next slide, please.

When Do I Report? This table outlines the type of data your report during each reporting period. When your reports are due in the PMT and whether you are also needing to upload your reports to JustGrants. As you can see in the second column, your report on narrative questions is in January, July, and during your last reporting period of grant activity, regardless, of where it falls in the schedule. For Byrne SCIP grantees, the performance report module in JustGrants is still in development. Therefore, you will not need to upload a PMT PDF report in JustGrants until July 2023. At this time, you will be asked to report data from October 1st, 2022 through June 30th, 2023 in JustGrants. Grantees should save two PDFs from PMT October to December and January to June and attach both to the performance report in JustGrants to cover the periods. Next slide, please.

As mentioned previously, you'll report your data in the PMT. A PDF version of the performance measures for your grant program can be found at the link on this slide. We encourage you to come familiar with the performance measures before you report for the first time. It is best to use the questionnaire as a guide to track relevant data in your files to help with organization and consistency. To access the PMT, go to the link on the screen ojpsso.ojp.gov. If you are a first-time user or your account is inactive, please contact the PMT helpdesk for assistance. The email address is listed on the slide there. Next slide, please.

Now that you have the what, where, when, and how to report, let's look at the Byrne SCIP unique questionnaire structure, listed on this slide are the categories that will be in the questionnaire. Within the questionnaire, there are three types of questions, multiple choice questions where grantees should select the response that best reflects their activities. Multiple response questions, which allows grantees to select all responses that reflect their activities. And lastly, open text questions where grantees may be requested to input numeric or text responses. Next slide, please.

Now let's go over some Best Practices. So the narrative questions, we want to set you up for success and offer a few tips and lessons learned. It's important to write well-defined goals and objectives to clarify your priorities and highlight criteria for success from the very beginning. The SMART mnemonic walks users through important dimensions of good goals and objectives. Your goal should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. We recommend that you reevaluate your goals twice a year to determine whether they should be updated. Use your data to drive this process. Next slide.

Here are a few examples of well-defined SMART goals that will set this program up for success, while the goals on the right are great goals they are difficult to measure and not specific enough to measure success. The goals on the left are specific, measurable, achievable, and relevant to the program. Be sure to ask yourself, what is the program seeking to accomplish? How will we measure the progress? Is it reasonable and does it align with overall goals, the program's objectives? And lastly, is there enough time to accomplish this goal? Next slide.

We would also like to share some tips to improve data quality that your program can do from the very beginning. It is recommended that a designated staff person coordinate all performance measure data collection and entry to ensure consistency. If this is the first time you will report data, make sure you're familiar with the data you will need to collect a report. Do this by reviewing the PDF version of the questionnaire. Ensure a backup person is aware of the data collection and the reporting process. Consider available data collection methods including case management systems or other databases, spreadsheets, or tracking intake forms. If partner organizations are included in your program design, be sure to engage them from the very start of the planning process. And lastly, ensure all data you receive from contracted service providers is reviewed and validated before completing data entry. Next slide.

So I know this was a lot of information from the PMT team. We will be holding a performance measures training tomorrow, April 11th at 1:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. We'll be discussing the performance measures more in-depth and we’ll be providing you with more information. The link to register is on the slide and I will be entering it in the chat momentarily. Next slide.
Finally, I would like to provide you with BJA PMT helpdesk contact information and a list of available resources that will provide you additional information as needed. Our office hours are Monday through Friday, 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. We strive to return every email within 24 hours. So please don’t hesitate to email us even if it's after business hours. I will now like to hand the presentation over to the policy team.

ERIN PFELTZ: Aja, I think you will cover in John Hopkins.

AJA PAPPAS: Yes. So now, we're going to talk about the training and technical assistance providers for each category. A TTA overview of your Category 1 is for developing and supporting extreme risk protection order programs. Category 2, supporting state, local, and tribal courts, implementing safer communities, and your Category 3 is for implementing safer communities, training and technical assistance. Next slide.

Your Category 1 TTA provider is the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. The Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, CGVS, combines the expertise of leading gun violence researchers with skills of experienced advocates to advance equitable policies that reduce gun violence. Next slide.

The CGVS team has engaged with advocates and policymakers in all jurisdictions that have passed ERPO in the last decade, testified before the U.S. Congress and numerous state legislators, and continues to engage with implementers across the U.S. CGVS is partnering with the National Criminal Justice Association for Category 1 efforts. Next slide.

Some of the activities include creating an ERPO Resource Center, develop and disseminate trainings, support states in establishing ERPO initiatives, identifying model learning sites, and hosting a national ERPO implementation convening. Next slide.

MICHELLE WHITE: Thank you, Aja. So my name is Michelle White. I'm a Senior Policy Advisor at BJA, and I am super excited to add that we have a Category 2 TTA that is focused on supporting all of those courts that you all have been asking questions about. So I am going to hand things over to Nancy Hart, a Senior Program Attorney at the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, otherwise known as NCJFCJ. Nancy?

DARYL FOX: Nancy, if you are speaking, your computer is muted.

NANCY HART: Sorry about that. Thank you, Michelle. Yes, I'm with the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. And our mission is to provide all judges, courts, and related agencies involved with juvenile, family, and domestic violence cases with the knowledge and skills to improve the lives of the families and children who seek justice. The Safer Communities Court Capacity Project, which we are leading, its design reflects the relevant work that the NCJFCJ has led to date at the nexus of firearms, judicial leadership, and court practice. Next slide.
You'll see here that we have a number of partners that we will be working with as your TA provider. The Safe Communities Court Capacity Project will be informed by a diverse group of expert partners representing varied critical perspectives on judicial leadership, court management, litigant rights, law enforcement initiatives, behavioral health responses, and evidence-based policies. And you'll see an extensive list of the partners that we will be working with as we provide technical assistance to SCIP grantees. Next slide.

The NCJFCJ and our partners will be working on a number of different activities featured here. We will be creating a judicial resource center to assist state, local, and tribal courts in assessing and responding to court-involved individuals who may pose a risk to themselves or others with a firearm. We will also be developing training for court staff and judicial officers regarding firearms laws and best practice, especially as they apply to court-involved individuals in crisis. We will be creating and piloting a self--a Court Self-Assessment Protocol to deepen courts' capacities to identify and respond to court-involved individuals in crisis. And finally, we will be developing and disseminating a Judicial Toolkit on Firearms and Crisis Intervention, and a variety of other resources. Next slide. That's the end of the NCJFCJ description. I'll hand it back to, Michelle, I believe.

TENZING LAHDON: Thank you, Nancy. I'll take it over from here. Hello, everyone. My name is Tenzing Lahdon. I am Senior Policy Advisor at BJA. For Category 3, Implementing Safer Communities and Training and Technical Assistance, we were seeking a TTA provider that will support and assist with both Byrne SCIP and JAG grantees that receive funding for Crisis Intervention Program that's collecting data elements to meet the statutory reporting requirements outlined in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022, and also to prepare for potential participation in an evaluation related to effectiveness of the Crisis Intervention Program in preventing violence and suicide. NCJA like other TTA providers were competitively selected to lead this effort. I understand many of you are very familiar with NCJA and its work. NCJA has and continues to serve as a technical assistance provider for our Byrne JAG SAAs. So we'll ask Allison Badger, Program Director with NCJA to please introduce herself and anyone else from her team who might be on the webinar. And if you could provide a quick overview of NCJA and work address, that would be great and emphasis on quick overview. So, Allison?

ALLISON BADGER: Thank you, Tenzing. And thank you everyone. I am Allison Badger. I am a Program Director for the NCJA Center for Justice Planning. As Tenzing mentioned, the National Criminal Justice Association or NCJA is a non-profit, non-partisan membership association and technical assistance provider dedicated to assisting criminal justice agencies in the development and implementation of effective criminal justice policy. Members represent all facets of the criminal and juvenile justice community, including law enforcement, corrections, prosecution, defense, courts, victim, and witness services, and academics, as well as elected officials. The NCJA Center for Justice Planning is a long-standing technical assistance provider for Byrne JAG, SAAs. It's great to see so many of you on the call today. I have with me Simone Greene, Amanda Blasko, and Mike Fargen on the call as well, who will also be supporting this work. And so the Center for Justice Planning team consists of experienced planners with backgrounds in local justice systems, data management, and analysis, training, law enforcement programs, pre-trial, behavioral health, and substance use disorders, and more. And we are committed individually and as a team to helping justice systems find safe, fair, and efficient solutions to their challenges, and just really excited to get to work with you all. I will pass it back to you, Tenzing. Thank you.

TENZING LAHDON: Thank you, Allison. So in terms of activities, we are Category 3, NCJA role develop and administer individual state assessment tools to ascertain existing crisis intervention programs, gaps, and need. And this will include development and dissemination of the SCIP questionnaire assessment tools and stakeholders questionnaire that will allow us to identify the needs and address any gaps that might be there. They will also help in creating and implementing individual state work plans based on individual site assessments and recommendations from project teams, SAAs, stakeholders, and supporting states in creation and engagement of their Byrne SCIP advisory board. So I know in the poll, like people were in different places with the advisory board, so NCJA would be a good place if you have any questions about especially if you are in earlier stages of developing advisory board, that would be a good resource for you. Evaluate, monitor, and provide direct and tailored TTA to address evolving and challenges, priorities, and lessons learned to Byrne SCIP and Byrne JAG grantees. They will also be providing onsite and virtual Training and Technical Assistance through peer-to-peer engagement, training, and webinars to guide state exploration, implementation, or enhancement of appropriate strategies and highlighting any promising practices in the field. And this will also include creating a portal for sites to request training and technical assistance, developing tools for states to utilize with their subawards for data collection efforts. And, they will also be doing quarterly roundtables and a check-in calls with SAA to see if there's any—the training and technical assistance need. And lastly, creating an online dashboard for each state as well as overall dashboard, which will help us in viewing trends across different sites. So we are excited to have NCJA, Johns Hopkins, and National Council for Juvenile and Family Court Judges on board to support the Byrne State Crisis Intervention Program. So really excited for all the TAA providers to be on board for this. So now, I'll hand it over to Aja to go over the resources and the questions section. Thank you.

AJA PAPPAS: Thank you. In this section, I'm going to go over resources and then we'll touch base on questions. Next slide, please.

So the Byrne SCIP Frequently Asked Questions. It is a really great resource. I highly encourage you to bookmark this link and check back on it frequently. This will be put in the chat momentarily for you to access. Next slide.

Some other great DOJ and BJA resources can be found by following any of these hyperlinks that are here. It will also be within the slide deck once we get that sent out. And I do believe that has already been put into the links for this will be put into the chat as well. So you can find DOJ and DOJ-funded resources by following any of the hyperlinks, everything from BJA Adult Drug Court Program information, BJA Veterans and Treatment Court Programs through the Safer Family, Safer Communities. Some other resources also will be for some of our TTA providers, such as the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy. There's also some National Guidelines for Behavioral Health Crisis Care, which is the Best Practice Toolkit. Next slide.

Some additional resources are our BJA website has a lot of information. You can also go to our Office of Justice Programs and look at the award data. This is where you will find out the amounts that were awarded and some other information. You can also go to our OJP Grant Application Resource Guide. This is a great guide for you to use as a resource, especially when satisfying any outstanding special conditions. It will be outlined kind of what we may be looking for in there. You may also submit a success story. We love to hear what you guys are doing by following that hyperlink that is right here on the fourth one. Again, there's the link for the Byrne SCIP Frequently Asked Questions, FAQs that I just touched on a little bit ago, and then the BJA Performance Reporting Resources and also the PMT team shared some of those resources during their section of this webinar. And then your JustGrants Training Resources. If you are not familiar with JustGrants, I highly encourage you to bookmark this page and you will find great resources on how to submit everything from a GAM, which as you could see from what I talked about earlier, there's going to be a lot of GAMs that are required in order to complete your project's post award. So please bookmark that and use those resources. Next slide.

So for questions, please enter in the Q&A box. Some of you have already been doing that and thank you. And it will send to all panelists and we will go ahead and get those questions answered to the best of our ability. Erin?

ERIN PFELTZ: Thank you so much, Aja. And I just want to add in on the topic of available resources. If you haven't been following the chat, we've posted a lot of links to available resources for the program, including the registration link for the performance measurement training tomorrow. So definitely take a look at that and grab those links while they're up there and then they will be available after the webinar as well. So again, if you have any questions, please enter them in the Q&A box. We're happy to answer them. If we aren't able to get to something on the call or if there's something that you wanted to follow-up with afterwards, we're also happy to answer via email.

It looks like we got a question. “What is the expected turnaround time for the approval from BJA once the approved plan by the SCIP Advisory Board has been submitted?” So we will work to review and approve this as quickly as possible and our hope is to turn it around quickly. It depends on the project plan. It depends on the information provided. So we may follow back up with some additional questions, but we will be working to turn those around as quickly as we can.

We received a question that it appears from the information provided that we can use all of the under $10,000 pass-through for state courts that support units of local government without a waiver. And this is correct. The less than $10,000 amount may be provided to state courts that provide criminal justice and civil justice services to the less than $10,000 jurisdictions within the state. For questions regarding the makeup of the advisory board, if you have questions kind of specific to who would meet the requirements of the board, please don't hesitate to reach out to us and we can provide additional guidance on that.

We received a question on who is the Byrne SCIP authorized representative. And this is the individual in the organization that has the legal authority consistent with the award conditions related to the authorized representative. So the legal authority to accept the award would be the Authorized Representative. And you can find the name of your Authorized Representative in the JustGrants system.

We received a question. “Can all subaward be submitted in one GAM?” Yes, they can, if they're all available at that time. However, if any changes happen throughout the lifecycle of the project, we know it goes for four years, if there are any changes to the subawards, a new GAM would need to be submitted. But yes, all can be submitted in one GAM. Jeannine we received a question related to the quarterly performance reports and their due dates. And the question is, did I hear correctly that the quarterly performance reports for Q1 through December '22 and Q2 through March of 2023, and Q3 through June of 2023 are not due until July of 2023?

JEANNINE BULBULIA: Yes. That is correct, because it's still in development in JustGrants. So that is correct. So grantees will have to separate them into multiple PDFs and upload them once the system is developed.

ERIN PFELTZ: Thank you. We received a question regarding the maximum on administrative costs and would that include administrative costs for a subrecipient if they have one? And yes. Subawards are also limited to 10% for direct administrative costs as well.

So we are right at 4:00. I want to thank you all so much for your participation and excellent questions. And we are going to capture all of the items in the chat in the Q&A. So if there's anything we didn't get to during the webinar, we will certainly follow-up for anything that we weren't able to address. As noted, the slides and recording will be available within the coming days. I don't know the exact timeline for when they'll be posted, but we will make sure that all participants receive notification when they're available. And again, we want to thank you so much for your participation today. And have a great afternoon.

DARYL FOX: On behalf of the Bureau of Justice Assistance and our panelists, we want to thank you for joining today's webinar.