Senate Community Budget Issue Requests - Tracking Id #1203 Little Acorns Juvenile Crime Prevention Program
Requester:	Rick Gelinas		Organization:		Little Acorns Children and Family Programs, Inc.
Project Title:	Little Acorns Juvenile Crime Prevention Program		Date Submitted:		01/31/2000 10:03:51 AM
District Member:	Walter Campbell		Service Area:		Regional
Counties Affected:	Broward, Dade, Palm Beach
Recipient:	Little Acorns Children and Family Programs, Inc.		Contact:		Rick Gelinas
	506 Lake Elbert Drive East		Contact Phone:		(863) 298-8748
	Winter Haven 33881
Project Description:
This program provides training for parents to be more effective in parenting their high-risk children, as well as training those children to be resonsible and productive citizens. Specifically, parental training includes skils in child behavior control, developing values for youth, and anger and hostility control. The program also provides academic tutoring and homework assistance, promotes citizenship, sports and group memberships, and develops basic employability skills for yotuh and parents. The program uses professionals, paraprofessionals and peer mentoring and leadership. Specifically, parenting skills training is performed by specially trained teachers. Value development is performed with peers, who are supervised and coached by trainers. Peer involvement with paraprofessional tutors is also used for academic tutoring and homework assistance. Anger and hostility reduction training is performed by viloence reduction trainers. The program targets high-risk youth, including first-time offenders, truants, gang members and school disciplinary problems. Identification of youth is done with school district, family, and police and other local government involvement.
Services Provided/Benefit to State:
This program provides a resource to address the state-wide problems associated with youth delinquency and truancy. In part, the program provides a preventative measure by reaching at-risk youths who have not yet had criminal justice involvement. These goals and benefits are addressed by Little Acorns as an experienced and proven resource, with an 87% success rate with a general high-risk population which has participated in Little Acorn programs. In a recent year, Little Acorns achieve a 100% non-recidivism rate among first-time offenders who participated in Little Acorn programs. If fully funded, the program would reach over 9,000 persons of families with high-risk children between the third and fifth grades. This is a proven program which the State has funded from various sources since 1989, in amounts ranging from $45,000 to $370,000.
Measurable Outcome Anticipated:
The program expects to reduce recidivism by 70% among first-time offenders who are enrolled in the program. Likewise, truancy and suspensions are expected to be reduced for 70% of participants. Domestic violence intervention is also expected to be reduced by 70% among participating children and families.
Amount requested from the State for this project this year:				$650,000
Total cost of the project:		$825,000

Request has been made to fund:			Operations
Is there Local Government or Private match for this request?						Yes
	Cash Amount:	$50,000		In-Kind Amount:		$125,000
Was this project previously funded by the State?						Yes
	Fiscal Year:	1999-2000		Amount:		$50,000
Is future-year funding likely to be requested?						Yes
	Amount:	$500,000
	Purpose for future year funding:				Recurring Operations
	Will this be an annual request?					Yes
Was this project included in an Agency's Budget Request?						Unknown
Was this project included in the Governor's Recommended Budget?						Unknown
Is there a documented need for this project?						Yes
	Documentation:	The Juvenile Justice Plan for each county cites as a first priorty juvenile crime reduction.
Was this project request heard before a publicly noticed meeting of a body of elected officials (municipal, county, or state)?						Yes
	Hearing Body:	Many times and places, including State Senate committee, relative to previous years' funding.
	Meeting Date:	03/01/1999