The Judicial Branch of Arizona, Maricopa County
Juvenile Probation >Probation
Community Supervision: GATEWAY
The GATEWAY Project is designed to meet the needs of youth, families and the community by: working to reduce
truancy through community collaboration, providing support for parents of at-risk youth, and offering
family-centered strength based services.
The Maricopa County Juvenile Probation Department and community providers, Touchstone and Tumbleweed, have partnered with SAFE School sites in target zip codes to provide evidenced based programs to families. This intervention has demonstrated effectiveness in assisting families with skills necessary to engage, motivate, and change behavior. These services work not only with the at risk youth, but with the entire family to address the family as a system. These services are available, as needed, with bi-lingual counselors. The approach of FFT (Functional Family Therapy), MST (Multi-systemic Therapy) and BST (Brief Systemic Family Therapy) is to empower parents with skills and resources to independently address the issues that arise when raising teenagers, and provide ways to cope with family, peer, school and neighborhood problems.
This program enlists the collaboration of school personnel within the targeted areas, along with Safe School Officers assigned within those schools, and other Probation Officers involved with youth in the target areas. As envisioned, these individuals identify youth in the target areas that are most at risk of truant behaviors and assess these cases for referral to the ‘Gateway Project’. Professionals working with youth in school are aware of the precursors to truancy among youth in their classrooms, and identify youth often described as ‘just waiting to fail’.
The Maricopa County Juvenile Probation Department and community providers, Touchstone and Tumbleweed, have partnered with SAFE School sites in target zip codes to provide evidenced based programs to families. This intervention has demonstrated effectiveness in assisting families with skills necessary to engage, motivate, and change behavior. These services work not only with the at risk youth, but with the entire family to address the family as a system. These services are available, as needed, with bi-lingual counselors. The approach of FFT (Functional Family Therapy), MST (Multi-systemic Therapy) and BST (Brief Systemic Family Therapy) is to empower parents with skills and resources to independently address the issues that arise when raising teenagers, and provide ways to cope with family, peer, school and neighborhood problems.
This program enlists the collaboration of school personnel within the targeted areas, along with Safe School Officers assigned within those schools, and other Probation Officers involved with youth in the target areas. As envisioned, these individuals identify youth in the target areas that are most at risk of truant behaviors and assess these cases for referral to the ‘Gateway Project’. Professionals working with youth in school are aware of the precursors to truancy among youth in their classrooms, and identify youth often described as ‘just waiting to fail’.
© 2007
