GOSHEN – The Elkhart County Judiciary is acting as a conduit for a $450,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.
The award was announced in April through the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s Building Local Continuums of Care to Support Youth Success initiative. The Elkhart County Council voted this month to appropriate the money.
Ross Maxwell, court administrator, said Oaklawn Psychiatric Center will match the money and use it for a research, planning and assessment project lasting up to two years.
Anna Sawatzky, executive director of The Source, said they worked with Elkhart County Court Services and the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative on the grant application and hiring process for the 18- to 24-month program. She said they hope to start using it in early June.
“It will cost $450,000 over a year and a half to two years, depending on the extensions we get,” she said. “It’s a planning and assessment grant that really looks at cost savings in the juvenile justice system and where we can make improvements there, and then funnel those back into the system.”
She said they started looking at the new grant program because of the high numbers at the juvenile detention center and the problems sometimes encountered in getting people in need of treatment to Oaklawn in a timely manner.
“It came about because of the high counts in the juvenile detention center and some other frustrations about connections with community partners and things like that. So it takes two years to look at that process, see where we can make improvements, save costs and then get it flowing back into the system,” she said. “We have two employees who are eager to start and who will spend time looking at all the systems, figuring out where the strengths and weaknesses are, and spending time with families who have been through the system.”
They hope to have a solid proposal by the end of the project that includes recommendations for both judicial services and community partners, Sawatzky said.
