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At intake, the Diversion Specialist then administers two assessment instruments: The police

department’s Youth Diversion Assessment, which includes questions from the GAIN-SS, and the

state’s Assessment of Juvenile Risk of Future Offending for the youth. These are used to

determine the best programmatic fit and the family is then assigned to the appropriate group. If the

family agrees to participate in the program, they must sign a consent to participate in both the

required parent/guardian sessions and youth sessions, not to reoffend, and to permit access to the

child’s school records. Once this is complete, the Diversion Specialist notifies the originating

officer that the referral has been accepted and to which intervention service provider the youth has

been placed. Finally, the young person is added to the watch list for recidivism calculations.

Service Provision

Through the duration of the program, several community-based service providers have been

utilized to provide intervention services. However, seven organizations provided the majority of

intervention services to the diversion program participants. These include Anuvia Prevention and

Recovery Center, Family First, Future Leaders, Prevention, Teen Court, Urban Thoughts, and

Youth Development Initiative (no longer a service provider as of 2015).

Anuvia Prevention and Recovery Center (Anuvia) is a private, non-profit organization,

founded in 1958, by the county’s ABC Board. Anuvia offers a full continuum of assessment, pre-

treatment and outpatient treatment services for youth ages 12-17 who are struggling with or have

experimented with substances. Family First Community Services LLC (FFCS) is accredited by

CARF International and certified as a Critical Access Behavioral Health Agency (CABHA) for the

child/adolescent substance abuse continuum. Family First provides a variety of services to

children, adolescents, and adults with mental health, substance abuse, and/or

intellectual/developmental disabilities. For diverted youth, Family First facilitates the RISE

Program (Positive Solutions Model) designed to assist youth in increasing their skills to deal more

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