UMaine and USM researchers to support the city of Rockland and the MidCoast Community Collaborative on New Youth Justice Grant
Researchers from the University of Maine and University of Southern Maine are sub-awardees on a new grant in partnership with the city of Rockland and the MidCoast Community Collaborative. The federal award is part of the new Building Local Continuums of Care to Support Youth Success initiative from the Office of Justice Programs’ Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP).
This OJJDP planning grant will help existing service providers convene, network and plan a continuum of care to support youth and their families across the Midcoast region. The current grant is being run out of the city of Rockland, in partnership with the MidCoast Community Collaborative (MCC), the Rockland Police Department and other community organizations, who will develop a proposal to support the needs of at-risk youth and their families across Knox and Lincoln counties with the eventual goal of sharing the model with other collaboratives across the state.
Esther Enright from UMaine’s College of Education and Human Development and Sarah Walton from the Department of Sociology will provide research support in partnership with the MaineHealth Institute for Research for a case study, and document the collaboration across the MCC partners. Additionally, research staff from USM’s Catherine Cutler Institute, led by Jillian Foley, project director of Place Matters, will conduct asset mapping, support the development of a statewide youth network and lead the evaluation of the grant. Other project partners include Trekkers, who will serve as the fiscal sponsor for MCC, and staff from the Restorative Justice Institute of Maine, who will collaborate on the development of the statewide youth network.