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>View discussions about this entry Country: United States
Organization: Family Justice
Year the initative began (yyyy) - 1996
Project URL: http://www.familyjustice.org
Positioning in the Mosaic of solutions
Describe your program or new idea in one sentence. - Family Justice taps the natural strengths of families that helps empower young men involved in the justice system to lead healthier lives.
What makes your initiative uniquely positioned to create change in your community? - Family Justice’s unique organizational focus is not limited to the consequences for individuals convicted of a crime, but on entire families that have a loved one involved in the criminal justice system. By and large, criminal justice issues are public health issues, and by definition, serious multigenerational health concerns take a dramatic toll on families.
Challenging traditional punitive approaches to justice and offering cost-effective alternatives, Family Justice actively pursues partnerships beyond the citizen sector, enlisting as strategic allies law enforcement and corrections agencies often considered antagonists by those who seek to improve the conditions and societal image of young men. Family Justice’s unique approach combines concurrent systemic and individual change – a vital intervention at this historical moment and with the population of young people as the disparities in treatment based on an intersection of race and class are most apparent among youth in the justice system. Describe how you organize and carry out your work? - Family Justice is committed to changing the justice system to address one important challenge facing families living in poverty. The work is organized into three areas: advocacy, education, and research. The development of strength-based, family-focused case management tools—collectively called the Bodega Model—occurs in interaction with our two direct-service centers, where case workers test innovations on the ground and trainers bring this education across the country. Research helps Family Justice tailor our training and justify cultural change.
What is your plan to scale and expand your innovation into your community and beyond? - The Family Justice approach involves leveraging strengths that already exist within families and extended social networks; our organization helps create ways and means of accessing untapped resources, instead of building entirely new systems that bring about and sustain change. Apart from being very cost-effective, this allows Family Justice to be a catalyst for change while leaving the ongoing work of changing practice in the criminal and juvenile justice systems to the agencies already engaged in this work. At a practical level, the method of expanding this innovative approach involves working collaboratively with government and community based agencies to identify the needs for a change in practice and then to plan for and implement the right mix of training and technical assistance that will help each organization gain the necessary knowledge, systems, and networks they need to sustain their local/regional change effort. Feedback from evaluations has recently lead to the development of an online learning community and development of new training efforts directed towards mid-managers.
What other resources, institutional, or policy needs would be necessary to help sustain and scale up your idea? - To date, the Bodega Model® has proven effective in a diverse range of settings—small and rural areas, indigenous communities and large urban centers in the United States. The approach is ready to be brought to scale through collaboration with initiatives around the globe. Real-time communication is key to this process. The development of internet capacity in countries with fewer resources would be imperative to Family Justice's expansion in a cost-effective manner. Conferences on Family Justice training and practices would also propel our expansion. Conferences and web-based communication would afford people the space to discuss approaches with one another and capitalize on experiential learning.
Concrete methods of measurement, such as social return on investment and institutionalization of our new database tool, would spur research with family as the unit of analysis. Placing families at the center will have a broader impact on sentencing policies, incarceration, parole, and probation. Describe your impact in one sentence, commenting on both the individual and community levels. - Tapping the strengths of young men and their families, youth recognize and unlock their potential and help make communities stronger and safer.
What impact has your work achieved to date? - Since its founding in 1996, Family Justice has emerged as a leading national citizen sector dedicated to developing innovative, cost-effective solutions that benefit people at greatest risk of cycling in and out of the justice system. Through advocacy, education, and research, we offer a range of systemic interventions that address complex issues of people living in poverty. By providing extensive training and support to government agencies and community-based organizations, Family Justice helps families to unlock their potential to lead healthier and more productive lives. Our signature methods are adopted by growing numbers of strategic partners, for example the Department of Corrections in Ohio and Michigan and juvenile systems in California and New Jersey. We continue to innovate by learning from all of the experts—governmental and non-governmental workforces, families, and the neighborhoods they are connected to.
What measure do you use to gauge your impact and why? - Our research and evaluation staff utilize survey instruments, focus groups, and semi-structured interviews to collect self-report and observational information of the effectiveness of our training, technical assistance and direct service. Additionally, we are currently planning for long term social impact assessment to examine the sustained impact of our work within the field of corrections and planning an evaluation project utilizing community action research methodology to examine the impact of collaborating with a public housing authority to improve community and family well being.
How is your initiative currently being financed and how would you finance further expansion and/or replication? - The implementation of the Family Justice approach around the United States is currently financed through three different funding streams—government support to pilot new efforts and expand existing ones, contract work to support individual or groups of agencies, and private foundation grants to support innovations and capacity building efforts. Since Family Justice is currently in the capacity building phase of its strategic expansion efforts, it is imperative to secure from additional private foundations, corporations, and individuals. This will complement the main funding that we are able to access through government grants and contract work, but which does not pay for the building of an organization’s capacity to provide more and higher quality work.
Provide information on your current finances and organization: - a. annual budget
b. annual revenue c. sources of revenue (please provide percentages if known) d. number of staff (full-time, part-time, and volunteers) a. Our annual budget is $3,438,513. b. Our annual revenue is $3,475,360. c. Federal Grants 1,058,721 (30.46%); New York State and City Contracts 1,153,000 (33.18%); Training and Technical Assistance Contracts 268,950 (7.74%); Foundation Grants 815,189 (23.46%); Corporate and Individual 160,000 (4.60%); Other 19,500 (0.56%). d. 25 full-time employees; 7 part time employees; 1 volunteer. Who are your potential partners and allies? - Family Justice actively pursues partnerships beyond community-based social service and reentry organizations, enlisting as strategic allies law enforcement and corrections agencies often considered antagonists by those who seek to improve the conditions and societal image of young men. We collaborate directly with numerous federal, state, and local agencies, including prisons, jails, and parole and probation departments. Around the country, these agencies are realizing the benefits of looking beyond deficits and implementing strength-based, family-focused approaches. Family Justice offers concrete tools to affect such change.
Who are your potential investors? - Potential investors in Family Justice include a very broad group—individuals and groups interested in increasing the well-being of families and in making communities safer, in a cost-effective way. So far, we have been very successful in engaging private foundations and government entities. We have been less successful in securing support from corporations and individuals, but we consider them great possibilities for future support.
What is the origin of this innovation? Tell us your story. - Like most founders, I began with a dream that soon became a vision: We must tap the strengths of young men and their families to stop the cycles of crime, incarceration, victimization, poor education, and poverty that deplete a generation of young men and entire neighborhoods. This idea led to crucial questions: Could we get law enforcement agencies to become our partners in a new strength-based approach? And together, could we shift from a focus on the individual to a view that embraces young men’s social networks and communities? In 1996, we developed and tested a family support model at La Bodega de la Familia, a small New York City storefront where just months before, a police officer was shot and an alleged drug dealer was killed. There, we introduced new methods to engage families struggling with addiction or mental illness and helped prevent loved ones from going to jail. Independent evaluations of our work show that outcomes improve when law-enforcement and community-service providers leverage the strengths of people’s social networks. We continue to bring these lessons to scale in the criminal justice field through training and technical assistance. We devise, adapt, and test curricula and tools to help partner organizations improve skills and broaden their focus to include families and neighborhoods. And our approach worked! Today, growing numbers of strategic partners across the country are adopting Family Justice’s signature methods. To meet the rising demand for our advocacy, education, and research initiatives, we invite new partners to join us.
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers marketing material. - Carol Shapiro, founding director and president, is a nationally known innovator in the justice field. Over the past 30 years, she has devised numerous approaches to improving public safety and family well-being in the fields of drug abuse, mental health, housing, and law enforcement. Carol has been recognized for her work by being named an Ashoka Innovator for the Public Fellow, as a Join Together Fellow and as one of ten Women to Watch from Jewish Women International.
Contact Information:
Carol Shapiro
Founder and President Family Justice (NGO) Discussions about this entry |
Boys to Men: Tapping Family Strengths to End Cycles of Involvement in the Justice System
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Dear Carol, it was inspiring to attend your presentations in Adelaide recently. Too often, human services "do to" disadvantaged and dispossessed individuals according to rigid service criteria and inflexible practices, which can further disempower them. I work with a small service allocating and coordinating support for homeless individuals with high and complex needs, most of whom have had intensive involvement with human services, health and justice agencies, but despite (or as a result of) this, have become trapped in a cycle of homelessness. The La Bodega de la Familia focus on tapping the strengths of the individual and the family system, with the positive outcomes benefitting individual, family, community and society is truly holistic and a fantastic example of social inclusion in practice. Your own commitment to social justice and the honesty and integrity with which you shared your skill and experience with government and non-government agencies working with very disparate groups, was incredibly impressive. Clearly, the La Bodega de la Familia model was pertinent to all of the practitioners who attended and stimulated the discussion of current South Australian practice and comparision with La Familia. Many of the homeless individuals my service supports have been reconciled with family, once they are housed and their needs addressed, with clear benefits identified and achieved utilising a family support model. Other individuals have been excluded from family, however, La Familia has presented a challenge that, where possible, we support clients to maintain efforts to re-engage family, with additional resources available as necessary.
Christine,
Thank you for your message. My trip to Adelaide was inspiring and memorable, and I'm grateful for the warm reception I was given.
The social-inclusion perspective is akin to Family Justice's Bodega Model in a number of ways, in part because of the overlapping issues for society's most vulnerable families--health challenges (including mental health, substance abuse, and HIV/AIDS), involvement in the justice system, housing, employment, and more.
Empowerment is central to Family Justice's strength-based work, just as it is to social-inclusion initiatives. Given your focus on homelessness, you should know that we are developing a paper on housing with regard to families that have a loved one involved in the juvenile- or criminal-justice system. To learn more, please stay in touch--and you may want to sign up Family Justice's newsletter at our website, www.familyjustice.org.
With my thanks,
Carol Shapiro
Excellent effort...
Dear Carol,
I is exciting to me to see someone like yourself really making a difference in the lives of disenfranchised people. I recently retired as an adult probation officer and entered the MSW program at my local university. I'm helping to facilitate anger management courses at a level IV prison as my current internship. My goal is to help get certified domestic violence classes in the prisons, jails and juvenile institutions to help people redirect the quality (or lack of!) of their personal relationships. I hope to get in touch with you later and get some ideas of what you're doing and how your ideas can be incorporated into programs here--California.
good luck on your grant proposal and I hope to talk with you again one day... Nada
Nada,
Thank you for your interest in Family Justice. I wanted to respond to your comments as the project manager for work we are doing in partnership with California’s Division of Juvenile Justice. We’re currently piloting some family-focused and strength-based tools and methods at a boys facility—work that will likely inform statewide efforts to increase family contact and improve reentry outcomes. I invite you to visit our website at www.familyjustice.org and sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date on this project and others.
Best,
Margaret diZerega
Senior Project Associate, Family Justice
Hello Carol,
Fantastic work. It is really great to see your focus on not just the individual but the whole family unit. I understand what you are doing and now I would love to know more details about the "how." Could you describe in detail how you work with the family? What do you do with the family from the time an individual is let out of jail? Some concrete stories and details would be great!
Thanks Carol
Dana Frasz
Changemakers
Hi Dana,
Thank you for the response and for your support. Family Justice strives to center the family as the unit of analysis, and thus all of our direct service, education, research and advocacy model this goal. At our two direct service centers (http://www.labodegadelafamilia.org) family case managers engage families with a loved one involved with the criminal justice system, struggling with addiction or drug abuse, mental illness, or both.
Family Case Management is an innovative approach that brings together the individual needing services with their mentor, family members, the supervision officer (police, parole, or probation), and treatment providers to identify and build upon the family's assets and to build a network of healthy relationships. Family cohesion increases as families use their own and outside resources to meet their needs and to combat problems like multi-generational cycles of substance abuse, domestic violence, HIV/AIDS, and mental illness.
Family Case Management in Practice:
When Kat came to Family Bodega, she was an active addict, using cocaine and alcohol. Kat’s daughter had been in foster care for 18 months and her adult son, Bob, had just been paroled. When the family case manager first met with the family she helped Kat apply for Medicaid and Public Assistance benefits, and Bob reported that he had a job within days of his parole. Kat was still using, and Bob gave her an ultimatum: If she wanted his emotional and financial support, she would need to go into treatment.
The family case manager met with the family in their home to develop a family action plan. The family case manager reported that, “I’ve seen a whole turnaround. Kat would make it her business to come by every day. I started giving her a little certificate whenever she had some time clean, and her face would just light up.”
The family case manager maintains contact with Kat’s service providers. Kat and Bob continue to support each other, drawing on additional support from the direct service site.
One strong indication of the power of shifting mindsets to include family is the perspective of probation officers. Consider the story of Officer Winter from the New York State Division of Parole.
One of her parolees, Trey, had not been reporting to his weekly meetings and if things didn’t change, she was going to have to violate him, reluctantly. She said she knew part of the reason Trey wasn’t showing up was because he had to take his godmother to dialysis treatment. She thought Family Bodega might be able to work with Trey and his godmother to figure out how their needs could be met, including his parole requirements. A family case manager is now working in partnership with Officer Winter and the family. Officer Winter helped them find a home health aide care for Trey’s godmother and the Family Bodega case manager helped enroll Trey in a job-training program. His goal is to complete the program and find a job, while meeting his parole mandates. The family case manager and Officer Winter are in regular contact to discuss home visits and Trey and his godmother’s ongoing needs, as well as their progress.
I hope these case studies help people conceptualize the theory that engaging families helps interrupt inter-generational cycles of justice system involvement.