Reclaiming Futures was an organizational change initiative to support coordinated and individualized responses for justice-involved youth with problematic substance use issues. The initiative was managed by Portland State University’s Regional Research Institute and Graduate School of Social Work in Portland, Oregon. It began in 2001 by working with 10 communities across the United States. Fifteen years later, more than 40 jurisdictions had implemented or were currently implementing the Reclaiming Futures approach.
An evaluation of Reclaiming Futures at the Urban Institute and Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago estimated the initiative’s impact by conducting surveys of system actors and their community partners (Butts and Roman 2007). The study measured perceptions of justice and substance abuse treatment systems on three major dimensions (administration, collaboration, and service quality). In 2015, the Research and Evaluation Center administered the same questionnaire to the larger group of communities implementing Reclaiming Futures. The study compared their perceptions with those of respondents in the prior survey. The data suggested that communities with the strongest engagement in Reclaiming Futures tended to have more positive perceptions of their service systems, including administration, collaboration, and overall system quality.
Funding
$75,000
Core Staff
Jeffrey A. Butts (PI), Kathleen A. Tomberg, Jennifer Peirce, Douglas N. Evans, and Angela Irvine