Skip to main content
Article
The Development and Evolution of Reclaiming Futures at the Ten-year Mark: Reflections and Recommendations
Children and Youth Services Review (2011)
  • Laura Nissen, Portland State University
  • Dan Merrigan, Boston University
Abstract
Reclaiming Futures has been a successful national demonstration project, initially funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which seeks to improve a system-wide response to young people in the juvenile justice system with substance abuse issues. The initiative is a multiyear effort that has included complex simultaneous community and cross-system planned change efforts. The intention of the initiative is to develop, test, and disseminate a response to unmet needs and to extensive gaps and fragmentation in the availability and quality of services and opportunities that would have a positive impact not only on the lives of individual youth, but on community capacity to engage and encourage youth success as well. This article summarizes the developmental trajectory of the initiative, with a focus on elements of the planned change process. How change efforts were conceptualized, sequenced, executed, and evaluated are discussed and their implications explored. Now adopted in 29 communities around the nation, this article describes two federal and state dissemination efforts as examples of its continued expansion.
Keywords
  • Reclaiming Futures (Organization),
  • Juvenile justice reform,
  • Teenagers -- Substance abuse -- Treatment,
  • Leadership
Publication Date
September, 2011
DOI
10.1016/j.childyouth.2011.06.007
Publisher Statement
Copyright © Elsevier B.V
Citation Information
Nissen, L.B. & Merrigan, D. (2011). The development and evolution of the Reclaiming Futures model at the ten-year mark: Reflections and recommendations. Children and Youth Service Review, 33(S1), 9-15.