Hawaii County Comprehensive Strategy for Juvenile Justice

Home

Hawaii County: Addressing Youth Issues Continued • Hawaii Island Anti-Bullying Coalition is a collaborative effort between State and County agencies working with private organizations to develop training and raise public awareness to the issue of bullying in schools. • East Hawaii Coalition for Youth is a group of State, County, private, and community organizations working to build transition services for foster youth and former foster youth on the Big Island. • Project PAU seeks to reduce access to and use of alcohol by underage persons in East and West Hawaii by increasing awareness among minors of the problems and consequences of underage drinking. PAU is also establishing community coalitions for development of community strategic plans and implementation of innovative projects. The strength of Hawaii County's Strategic planning process has been the support it has received from State and County agencies along with private, and community organizations. The ultimate beneficiaries of this collaborative effort will be the youth, their families, and the communities we live in. Through the Comprehensive Strategic planning process, Hawaii County will identify and prioritize issues relating to youth and to seek out innovative solutions to make full use of available resources. HAWAII COUNTY AND THE COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGY The Vision "EVERY YOUTH IN HAWAII COUNTY WILL BE A RESPONSIBLE, HEAL THYAND CARING COMMUNITY MEMBER" In May 2000, the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney recognized the need for collaborative effort among agencies and program and service providers to identify and address juvenile justice issues. A conference of nearly 100 individuals identified visions, goals and needed services. The enthusiasm and commitment by key government and community leaders was instrumental in taking the first step and getting the strategic planning initiative underway. Following that meeting, Hawaii County was selected as the 52"d community in the nation to receive federal technical assistance provided by OJJDP to develop a Comprehensive Strategy plan. The next step in the process was to match each individual with a specific committee/workgroup based on their area of knowledge. The goal was to effectively utilize professional and personal experience in performing a comprehensive community assessment, which would function as the basis for goals and objectives to be identified later in the plan. The following is a list of the 7 workgroups that make up the planning body along with a with a brief description of their area of responsibility: Data Collection and Analysis Collects and organizes data using the national risk factors to form a baseline community profile of juvenile justice data for Hawaii County from which four target risk factors were prioritized for the Big Island. This team will be involved in providing data for policy planning and evaluation of the success of programs implemented. In addition, they will update the data and will include other data sources as they become available. 10