Helping Justice-Involved Youth Transition Back to Traditional School Settings

(2016, December) | Useful to Parent Centers, advocates, families, and youth with disabilities involved in the juvenile justice system.

From the U.S. Department of Education, this suite of resources is intended to help justice-involved youth make a successful transition back to traditional school settings. These resources promote successful transitions by emphasizing the importance of early planning and working with family, mentors, facility staff, and school employees at every stage of the process. The suite of resources includes the following separate tools:

A guide written for incarcerated youth |  You Got This – Educational Pathways for Youth in Transition
The guide [PDF, 338KB] is designed to empower justice-impacted youth with the information, tips, and resources they need to plan for their future after leaving a facility. The packet provides checklists, guidance, lists of resources, and templates of commonly required documents to help students prepare for a successful re-entry.

Transition Toolkit 3.0: Meeting the Educational Needs of Youth Exposed to the Juvenile Justice System
The Department’s Office of Safe and Healthy Students has released the third edition of its Transition Toolkit [PDF, 12MB]. The toolkit brings together strategies, existing practices, and updated resources to enable administrators and practitioners with proven, high-quality transition services for students moving in, through, and out of the juvenile justice system. The toolkit includes information at various phases through the transition process from entry to release, as well as best practices, legal considerations, and various opportunities for justice-impacted youth after exiting a juvenile justice facility. It also includes guiding principles for effectively supporting justice-impacted youth, specific practices for implementing those guiding principles, and structured guidance for practitioners as they implement these new practices.

Website | Improving Outcomes for Youth with Disabilities in Juvenile Corrections
For practitioners working with justice-impacted youth with disabilities, the Office of Special Education Programs has created a website that provides technical assistance to ensure that those students are given the supports they need to successfully transition out of a juvenile justice facility. The website builds on many of the same guiding principles as the Transition Toolkit and offers specific assistance and links to effective resources that can help guide practitioners and families.

Document Highlighting Rights and Identifying Challenges Faced by Justice-Involved Youth
The Department’s Office for Civil Rights compiled this document [PDF, 658KB] that demonstrates some of the challenges faced by youth receiving an education in juvenile justice facilities and the way OCR protects their civil rights. The document also reaffirms the protections youth have under federal civil rights laws, and describes a recent investigation and resolution where OCR vindicated those rights.

Connect with all of the above resources at the Department’s Reducing Recidivism for Justice-Involved Youth page, at:
http://www.ed.gov/jjreentry