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1996 SESSION


HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 65
Requesting the Department of Youth and Family Services to develop internal policies and procedures allowing for local use of Virginia Juvenile Community Crime Control Act funds.

Agreed to by the House of Delegates, March 7, 1996
Agreed to by the Senate, March 6, 1996

WHEREAS, the 1992 General Assembly established the Comprehensive Services Act for at-risk youth and their families; and

WHEREAS, the goals of that Act are to restructure the Commonwealth's services and funding for youth who have emotional or behavioral problems into a collaborative community-based and community-managed system of services and funding for these youth and their families; and

WHEREAS, eight funding streams of the four major child-serving systems of schools, foster care, mental health, and juvenile justice were consolidated into a single state pool of funds; and

WHEREAS, in fiscal year 1995 only ten percent of this fund was expended on juvenile justice populations; and

WHEREAS, the juvenile justice funding streams which were incorporated into the Comprehensive Services Act did not require a local match of funds prior to 1992; and

WHEREAS, localities are currently forced to prioritize their service population based on limited local resources; and

WHEREAS, the local funding requirements are partially responsible for the limited services available at the community level for the juvenile justice population as substantiated in the 1995 Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission report which found that only two out of ten juveniles adjudicated guilty in juvenile court were referred for community services; and

WHEREAS, the 1995 General Assembly enacted the Virginia Justice Community Crime Control Act to establish a community-managed system of predispositional and postdispositional alternatives for juvenile justice populations; and

WHEREAS, localities are given the option of coordinating the Comprehensive Services Act and the Virginia Justice Community Crime Control Act; and

WHEREAS, local governments require the authority to use other funding sources to minimize the local dollars spent on the Comprehensive Services Act; and

WHEREAS, it was the express legislative intent of the Virginia Justice Community Crime Control Act to maximize local flexibility in developing systems of care for court-involved youth; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED by the House of Delegates, the Senate concurring, That the Department of Youth and Family Services be requested to develop internal policies and procedures to allow for participating localities to use their Virginia Juvenile Community Crime Control Act funds in leveraging their "protected dollar levels", without reducing local maintenance efforts, in order to adequately serve their juvenile justice populations. The Department is further requested to establish accounting procedures, in collaboration with the Office of Comprehensive Services, to ensure that juvenile justice populations are appropriately served through designated dollars.