Grant to help find cost savings in juvenile court system

JORDAN FOUTS, The Elkhart Truth, Ind.
·2 min read

GOSHEN — The Elkhart County Judiciary is acting as a pass-through agency for a $450,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.

The award through the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s “Building Local Continuums of Care to Support Youth Success” initiative was announced in April. 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 toward a research, planning and assessment project of up to two years.

Anna Sawatzky, director of The Source, said they worked with Elkhart County Court Services and the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative on the grant application and the process of hiring staff for the 18- to 24-month program. She said they hope to start using it in early June.

“It’s $450,000 over a year and a half to two years, depending on extensions we get,” she said. “It’s a planning and assessment grant really looking at cost savings across the juvenile justice system and where we can make improvements there, and then funnel them back into the system.”

She said they began looking at the new grant program because of high numbers at the Juvenile Detention Center and the difficulty found sometimes when trying to get people who need treatment into Oaklawn in a timely manner.

“It came about because of high census at juvenile detention and some other frustration with linkages with community partners and stuff. So it spans two years looking at that process, seeing where we can make improvements, cost savings, and then funnel it back into the system,” she said. “We have two staff who are keen to start who will be spending time with all of the systems, finding out where some of the strengths and weaknesses are, spending time with families that have been through the system.”

They hope to have a solid proposal at the end of the project that contains recommendations for both court services and community partners, Sawatzky said.