By Karen Erdos - A merger of the city’s Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) into the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), the city’s child welfare agencies was announced in Mayor Bloomberg’s State of the City address on Wednesday, January 20. This should lead to more community-based care for non-violent juvenile offenders allowing them to remain with their families and receive services in their communities designed to keep them connected with education and prevent recidivism. We applaud this decision that should improve outcomes for youth, families and public safety.
About a third of CRE’s work is with youth-serving organizations and we understand that in addition to the benefits to the youth themselves, community-based strategies save money as well. Sending young people to detention facilities is expensive, costing over $200,000 per youth per year. While detention is designed to punish and separate youth from negative influences, it also has the unintended consequences of separating youth from positive influences such as family, school, and community-based youth programs, things that are more likely to make them productive citizens in the longer term than jail.
Community-based interventions allow for both young people and their families to be better supported in a place they are likely to accept services, at home or in the neighborhood, and local services are often most culturally relevant.
Mergers are a hot topic in the nonprofit literature right now, but at CRE we are seeing fewer examples of mergers than the amount of press the topic generates would indicate. In general, groups are still in the talking vs. doing stage, and they are further down on the merger continuum exploring partnerships and alliances short of mergers such as collaborations. In our opinion, the merger of DJJ and ACS (obviously government agencies, not nonprofits) fits the bill for what we would consider good merger partners. Their clientele overlaps to a great extent, their programs have synergy, and working together should achieve both service enhancements for the clients – here, one-stop shopping – and cost reductions.
CRE stands ready to assist local nonprofits that are considering mergers and other strategic alliances. Read more about our thinking on collaborations.
Subscribe via RSS feed 
Comments
Post has no comments.