Strategy

Engaged Institutions

The institutions in a young person’s life—schools, local government, agencies, and organizations—are just as influential to the needs and growth of a young person as Roca. Recognizing this, Roca creates partnerships with these institutions, benefiting from each other’s expertise. In dialogue and action, over time, Roca continues enacting alternative, restorative policies in our communities that will result in a systemic change of how our communities address the needs of this high-risk youth population.

This can be most dramatically seen through the evolving partnerships with the Chelsea Police Department, the Chelsea High School, and the Chelsea City Manager. These institutions have to behave differently in order to show up for these young people. Roca’s intentional work with these institutions has allowed Roca to engage with these and other partners in challenging dialogs, innovative strategic discussions, and planning sessions on such topics as economic development, statewide transitional employment, comprehensive teen pregnancy prevention and defining high-risk youth intervention work. Roca has been able to use its relationships with our partners to leverage funding, legislative advocacy, corporate partnerships, and public safety strategies. The following are some examples from FY09:

• Two Roca staff members are designated liaisons to the Chelsea Police Department for the purposes of information sharing, strategic planning, and targeted intervention work.
• 110 people were trained in Restorative Justice Peacemaking Circles Training (including Hampden County Sheriff’s Department, Chelsea Police Department, Department of Youth Services, Chelsea Public Schools, Phoenix Charter Academy, Judges, participants, and Roca staff).
• 75 people were trained in Prochaska’s Stages of Change (Chelsea Police Department, Revere Police Department, Chelsea Public Schools, Hampden County Sheriff’s Department, Youth Workers, and Youth Participants).
• Formalizing and coordinating partnership with Chelsea High School through a new approach to intervention with most at-risk young people, particularly 9th graders.
• Roca Youth co-led 6 Circles with Chelsea High School and the Chelsea Police in response to a number of incidents with young people in the community.
• Roca Hosted Think Tank sessions to define Intervention Practice and Strategies with criminal justice partners resulting in the completion of an Intervention Manual that was distributed at a public venue to draw attention to the field of high risk youth intervention.
• Roca hosted 5 planning/coordination meetings (with 16 individuals from 10 engaged institutions and 10 Youth Star Members) focused on creating a comprehensive community needs assessment for high-risk young adults 14-24 related to substance abuse and related consequences (gang involvement, criminal activity, HIV/AIDS).
• In partnership with MGH, Roca expanded its current clinic hours and is convening a group of community stakeholders to participate in an evaluation/assessment of the issues of prostitution with young people in Chelsea and potential alternative processes.
• The Chelsea District Court appointed Judge Dianna Maldonado, as the First Justice of the Chelsea District Court. Judge Maldonado is the first Latina appointed to this position and in her swearing in ceremony, she mentioned Roca numerous times as she committed to ensure that the court would be a part of and involved in the community.
• The Chelsea City Manager, Jay Ash, has an expertise in economic development and continues to be a partner in these efforts. He is working with Roca on its next steps in business development.
• In partnership with MGH, Roca is convening a group of community stakeholders to participate in an evaluation/assessment of the issues of prostitution with young people in Chelsea and potential alternative processes.

Highlighted Partnership Project: Springfield

In order to demonstrate the ability to scale the high-risk youth intervention model, Roca is committed to replicating itself in Springfield, Massachusetts. This is the first undertaking of its kind for Roca, and is critical in deciding future scale.

Roca understands that in order to affect more young people and to demonstrate the effectiveness of our model, replication is necessary. We have found an appropriate city—Springfield, Massachusetts—where we believe the need for the model is strong and the appropriate structures are in place. This is a big, bold step that will inform our long-term plans for impact and scale.

We believe that Springfield is an ideal place for Roca to replicate itself. Springfield and Chelsea are remarkably similar. Springfield is a poor Massachusetts city with high rates of youth violence, and high school dropout and teen pregnancy rates. Springfield has recently returned to local governance after being run by a state-appointed Finance Control Review Board; Chelsea is likewise poor with high teen violence and pregnancy, it was the first city in the Commonwealth to go into state receivership since the Great Depression, and has been out of receivership successfully for close to fifteen years.

These similarities are accompanied by tremendous opportunity. Springfield has a range of long-standing social service organizations, a strong college system, several regional and national businesses, and perhaps one of the best performing Sheriff’s Departments in the country. These strengths, combined with Roca’s effective intervention model to engage the communities’ highest risk, most vulnerable and most dangerous young people, will allow the city to move forward and build for the future.

Over the past year, Roca has had the extraordinary privilege of working with the Hampden County Sheriff’s Department to pilot a transitional employment project with young adult high-risk offenders re-entering the community. Based on the results of this work, Roca is determined to expand its efforts and bring its high-risk youth intervention model to Springfield, helping young people work through the process of change, live out of harm’s way, and move towards economic independence. We look forward to sharing our lessons and helping more young people change their lives and their communities for the better.

The proposed target population for these replicated services is: young people between the ages of 16–24 who have dropped out of school, are street/court/gang involved, or are re-entering from prison; are disengaged and unable to participate in other programs; and, who are able to respond to a cognitive behavioral intervention. Through this replication project, Roca will build the capacity over four years to intensively work with 160 young people per year, run a minimum of one (1) transitional employment crew, and build out advanced transitional employment and long-term employment opportunities over time. To serve 160 young people and operate one (1) transitional work crew, the budget will be approximately $1.25M per year.

The primary partner of the project will be the Hampden County Sheriff’s Department. Roca will also work with the City of Springfield, the Springfield Police Department, and an array of other employment, human service, health, educational and other services.