Redeploy Illinois Annual Report - 2021

Every year, thousands of Illinois teenagers are brought into the juvenile justice system who are struggling with poverty, substance use issues, mental health challenges, trauma, and other factors that contribute to risk-taking behavior and/or illegal activity. The harm of arrest, detention, and most damagingly, incarceration on the lives of these youth and their families is immeasurable, and the cost to the state is enormous. Rather than incarcerating youth, the Illinois Department of Human Services funds the Redeploy Illinois program within the Bureau of Youth Intervention Services, which provides a community based alternative to incarceration.

Funding from the Redeploy Illinois provides individualized services to prevent further justice involvement and an opportunity for each youth to reach their full potential. Using a holistic, positive youth development approach that addresses overall need identified by assessment, the Redeploy Illinois program offers culturally and developmentally appropriate services and resources to youth to ensure lasting public safety. Along with rehabilitating youth, the Redeploy Illinois program creates a strong infrastructure of collaboration between local juvenile justice stakeholders and social service providers and reshapes how the juvenile justice system works with and for youth and the communities they live in.

In January 2005, when the Redeploy Illinois program began, 1,725 youth on average were being housed in Illinois juvenile correctional facilities at a per-capita annual cost of $70,827 per youth. Since 2005, the cost of a juvenile commitment has increased yearly to $161,000 in 2016. The cost per youth continues to increase as the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice (IDJJ) has been increasingly successful in reducing its overall youth population in facilities every year since the Redeploy Illinois program began.

Redeploy Illinois began as a pilot project in four sites and 15 counties in January of 2005. By the end of 2021, Redeploy Illinois had expanded to 10 active sites covering 45 counties, and three planning grant sites. From its inception 17 years ago, Redeploy Illinois programs have provided individualized, intensive services to 4,842 youth and their families. The successful implementation of this program has resulted in Redeploy Illinois counties reducing commitments to IDJJ by 65%, nearly 4,000 fewer youth being committed to IDJJ over the program's 17 years and a cost avoidance for Illinois taxpayers of more than $158 million in unnecessary incarceration costs. In addition, the rate of admissions to detention centers decreased. In 2021, the average per-capita annual cost to serve a youth in the Redeploy Illinois program was $8,176.21, approximately 19% of the per-capita annual cost to house a youth in an IDJJ facility. In 2021 alone Redeploy Illinois program sites saved Illinois taxpayers nearly $15 million in unnecessary incarceration costs.

Redeploy Illinois has proven to be an essential state program for youth and families, enduring through the State Budget Impasse of FY2016 and the Covid-19 Pandemic of 2020. Redeploy Illinois sites sustained and, in many cases, rebuilt their programs after an extended time of no funding in order to serve youth. Providers immediately adapted to the Covid-19 restrictions, ensuring families had access to food, school supplies (including Chrome Books and internet hot spots), and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). They switched to tele-therapy and found creative ways to keep youth and their families engaged. They had to adjust case plans and completely switch gears in many cases to account for impact of Covid-19 on youth and families.

Today, Redeploy Illinois programs and planning grantees are identifying ways to address the issue of gun violence as they plan for FY23 programming. The Redeploy Illinois Oversight Board (RIOB) will host a planning meeting this summer to discuss the Redeploy Illinois Program's response to gun violence. In recent years, DHS staff, the RIOB, and Redeploy Illinois Program sites have increased collaborative efforts with other programs, other state agencies, and other social service providers. Some Redeploy Illinois programs have expanded to include Individualized Education Program (IEP) specialists, Parental Support Specialists, Juvenile Justice Specialists, and Client Care Coordinators. RIOB and DHS staff have increased communication with the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice, the Administrative Office of Illinois Courts, and the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. Collaborative meetings between DHS-funded programs, including Redeploy Illinois Program, CCBYS, and Homeless Youth have been disrupted by COVID 19. These meetings will take place once restrictions are lifted.

The RIOB dedicated time and resources to develop a new Redeploy Illinois Core Service Area matrix, adopted at the December 2020 RIOB Meeting. In the past, the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (ICJIA) collected aggregate monthly program data on Redeploy youth served. In 2015, to improve data quality, DHS implemented eCornerstone, a web-based case management system used for collecting individual youth data, creating case plans, and generating reports. In 2017 the RIOB made a commitment to improving data collection for the Redeploy Illinois program. While the Redeploy Illinois Program is evaluated at some level every year to ensure compliance to program and fiscal standards, performance measures, etc., multiple full-scale evaluations of the Redeploy Illinois program have been conducted over the years, most recently conducted by ICJIA. The results of this study were made available to the RIOB in 2020 and published soon after. What became clear was that the data collected for the Redeploy Illinois program did not provide sufficient information to determine if the youth going through the Redeploy Illinois Program "got better "and achieved the outcomes that they desired. To address this, the RIOB dedicated time and resources to develop a new Redeploy Illinois Core Service Area matrix, adopted at the December 2020 RIOB Meeting, and designed to measure positive outcomes rather than failures. It is also intended to allocate responsibility for supporting the youth and their family among various service providers so that everyone contributes to the youth's success.

The RIOB will be working with Orbis Partners to develop a tool and data collection and case management system based on the new Core Service Area Matrix adopted by the RIOB in December of 2020. This new tool (screen) and system will guide Redeploy Illinois Programs in case planning and monitoring, ensuring Redeploy Illinois Program efforts support and complement probation's efforts and do not overwhelm youth and their families. The goal is to ensure youth leave the Redeploy Illinois Program better than when they came in, with supports in place, youth motivated and engaged, and in a position to not only avoid further involvement in the juvenile justice system, but to be a productive and active member of their community.

Evidence increasingly supports the conclusion that the Redeploy Illinois Program provides a significant return on investment in terms of financial and human resources. The Redeploy Illinois Annual Report presents data, analysis, and findings substantiating this claim. Further, it highlights efforts related to expansion in new counties and recent changes in program philosophy and approach. Finally, it presents the program's activities and highlights from 2015- 2021.