CHILDREN AND YOUTH JUSTICE CENTER

CCYJ was founded in 2006 with one mission: reform the foster care and youth justice systems to improve the lives of generations of children and youth. Our focus is large-scale, lasting systemic change. We carry out the research, pilot projects, policy advocacy, and grassroots engagements that make that change possible. No one else is doing this critical work.

More than 50,000 children and youth in Washington are involved in the foster care and/or juvenile justice systems. Too often, these are “feeder" systems to commercial sex trafficking, homelessness, and prisons. Too often, “system alumni" drop out of school, succumb to substance abuse, live on the streets or in poverty, and become young and unprepared parents—starting the cycle all over again. CCYJ's goal is to stop that vicious cycle.

Unlike many nonprofit organizations that provide essential, practical services to meet the immediate needs of foster kids or troubled youth, we work to effect permanent and lasting change within the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. In collaboration with others, CCYJ identifies and implements innovative systemic changes in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. This improves significant outcomes both for the individuals involved and for society. Our results have been and will be enacted into state law; adopted as practices and procedures by courts, schools, and public agencies; and developed into new treatments and interventions for at-risk, abused, or neglected children and their families. The laws, policies, and programs CCYJ develops are breaking cycles of poverty, crime, and abuse by giving kids and communities new tools for addressing old problems.

CCYJ is the only organization in Washington state focused solely on improving the foster care and juvenile justice systems. In 2006, CCYJ was selected to manage a $10 million grant by the MacArthur Foundation to lead its juvenile justice reform initiative in Washington. Working at the grassroots level in six counties, CCYJ guided legal system professionals, community leaders, parents, youth, and citizens in identifying and implementing ways to improve their juvenile justice systems. Today, more than 80 reforms have been implemented.

No one person or organization working alone can achieve results at the scale we need. We believe strongly in the need for collaboration, because it produces large-scale change. CCYJ collaborates with courts, schools, foster care, juvenile courts, mental health agencies, substance abuse treatment providers, community leaders, parents, youth, and other partners to identify and implement enduring systemic change. This concept is as fundamental to CCYJ as it is to the Roadmap Project, also a CCYJ partner.

Founding President/CEO Bobbe Bridge spent nearly 20 years as a judge in the King County Juvenile Court system and as a Justice of the Washington State Supreme Court. She developed in-depth firsthand knowledge about how the systems work and don't, and has unique insight into how they could be improved. She also developed excellent relationships and gained the respect of people in the systems that CCYJ is now working to reform.

As CCYJ celebrates 10 years of impact in 2016, we are especially proud of these 10 contributions to systems reform.

1. Children who are commercially sexually trafficked are identified and given protection, not punishment.
2. The experiences of LGBTQ youth in Washington state's foster care and juvenile justice systems are part of the training of all Washington state corrections officers.
3. Laws have been enacted to ensure youth facing mental health challenges can receive the treatment they need.
4. For the first time in the nation, elected and appointed officials come together regionally to find common solutions to gang violence.
5. Former foster youth can receive legal assistance to help them reach for their future without being blocked by their past.
6. Key decision makers came together, reviewed and took action on outstanding recommendations from 10 years of research on child welfare systems reform.
7. Courts trying to reduce disproportionalities in the foster care and juvenile justice systems can base practice changes on robust data.
8. Truancy interventions keep kids in school and out of the courts.
9. Infants and toddlers in foster care can receive treatment with their birth parents, strengthening the parent-child bond and increasing family reunification.
10. Law enforcement agencies and young people from communities of color can access a curriculum that engages them in dialogue and improves their communication with each other.

While great progress has been made, these outcomes need to be more deeply embedded and dispersed statewide.