WHAT WE DO

The South Bronx Community Connections (SBCC) program supports youth ages 12-18 through a network of caring and invested community-based programs that create positive opportunities for young people. SBCC takes youth who have been arrested and are facing Family Court and formally connects them to a network of positive adults and activities in the community. These various opportunities give youth options and a variety of ways to form relationships to positive supports. Youth also remain connected to members of CCFY where they receive additional court advocacy, probation support, mentoring and are engaged with intentionality through youth events and whole family engagement activities.

PROGRAM

South Bronx Community Connections

The SBCC program also supports the active cohort of grassroots providers in partnership with CCFY to strengthen their capacity and visibility. CCFY believes that the stronger and further unified grassroots organizations are, the more reinforced the net becomes in catching youth from falling deeper into the system. CCFY is proud to be in partnership with these organizations through the SBCC Program:

The Parent Peer Support Program is partnered with the NYC Department of Probation to provide parents of system-involved youth with Parent Coaches to guide them through their child’s involvement in the juvenile justice system. CCFY trains the parents of system-involved youth to serve as peer coaches for parents who are currently navigating the juvenile justice system. In the Parent Support Program, coaches are on site at the Bronx Family Court Probation Office from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Monday through Friday to help families navigate the juvenile justice system. Parent Coaches connect families to parent support groups and family strengthening programming, and are also available on call during evenings and weekends to support parents in crisis situations.

PROGRAM

Parent Support Program (PSP)

This program was birthed out of the advocacy of parents who wanted people who intimately understood what they were going through to help them. Evaluation of the program showed that 23% of youth who had a parent coach go to court with their parent were prevented from going deeper into the system.

PSP offers bilingual experiences to build up families:

  • Strengthening Families Workshops

  • Covenant of Peace Series 

  • Family Building and Community Celebrations/Events

  • Restorative Circle support towards family peace-making & healing

The Youth Justice Capacity Challenge is CCFY’s practical plan to build the infrastructure for a world with No Kids in Cages from the ground up. The Youth Justice Capacity Challenges (YJCC) prepares grassroots faith and neighborhood organizations to build the framework needed to serve youth that the juvenile justice system has failed.

Recognizing that the most brilliant programmatic innovations often come from those closest to the issue, the YJCC harnesses the collective power of grassroots collaborators in a given area who work together to serve youth who are falling through the cracks of existing programs and services. Selected grassroots collaboratives receive small grants for each organization from CCFY to participate in the Youth Justice Capacity Challenge. They join CCFY in diverting youth from deeper justice system involvement, while incorporating them into their own mentoring and youth development programming.

PILOT PROJECT

Youth Justice Capacity Challenge

Organizations also receive training on working with justice-involved youth and internal support through:

  • CCFY’s Alternative to Incarceration (ATI) Training Institute;

  • Intensive training on mentoring and positive youth development

  • Financial capacity building training and technical assistance from the NonProfit Finance Fund

  • Onboarding on to CCFY’s MIS Database to build their data collection infrastructure.

Organizations will join CCFY in joint planning with juvenile justice representatives, meetings with private foundations, and discussions with government officials in charge of juvenile justice policy – all with the hope of aligning funding for justice reinvestment to the grassroots and neighborhood organizations closest to the youth and families they serve.

For inquiries on starting a YJCC in your community, contact us at trainingta@cc-fy.org or fill out an application here:

Press release:

Developed from a Participatory Action Research (PAR) project in 2016 to uncover the experiences of young women and girls in the juvenile justice system, the GIRLS team worked to develop major themes from the report into training for organizations working with justice-involved youth. Currently, a cohort of girls are participating in a train the trainer process and being supported to be experts and culture change agents in their respective organizations.

PILOT PROJECT

GIRLS Ambassador Project

CCFY offers training and technical assistance that facilitates the various elements of community capacity building with the end goal of de-centering juvenile justice systems. 

CCFY offers training to community organizations, credible messengers, juvenile justice stakeholders and all who support the idea of ending youth incarceration.  With the goal of seeing the grassroots community equipped and supported to serve youth, CCFY trains and facilitates the following: 

CCFY’s training and technical assistance includes:

WORKSHOPS & TRAINING

Training and Technical Assistance

Alternative to Incarceration Training: CCFY’s flagship training is its 3-Day Alternatives to Incarceration (ATI) Training Institute; a 10-module curriculum that walks community organizations through the process of developing community-based alternatives to incarceration. 

Credible Messenger Boot Camp: This 5 day training intensive for credible messengers takes participants through a healing, community-building and educational process that further prepares them to facilitate dynamic safe spaces for youth.

G.I.R.L.S. Training: G.I.R.L.S. (Gifted, Inquiry, Research, Love, and Seen) is a training that implements knowledge from our own participatory action research on system-impacted girls. The workshops and curriculum were developed for training community members and system professionals in what it means to intentionally work with girls. 

Technical Assistance and Consultation: Since its inception, CCFY has been sought out to provide direction on topics such as justice reform initiatives, best practices in community engagement and youth programming, research, and credible messenger/parent support mentoring. All staff at CCFY are experts in the practical application of what they do. 

CCFY also offers a number of other workshops and training sessions to help system and community stakeholders implement best practices in community-based alternatives such as Positive Youth Development, Court Advocacy, Credible Messenger Mentoring and Parent Peer Support.