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In 2022, the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC)/Bureau of Justic Assistance (BJA) and JBS International, Inc. initiated the Protecting Futures: Building Capacity to Serve Children and Youth Impacted by America’s Drug Crisis initiative. This initiative expands, enhances, and works towards replicating desperately needed supports for children and youth who are victims of substance use-related crime, and their families and caregivers. The initiative accomplishes this by identifying and advancing innovative approaches to providing direct services, including multidisciplinary responses that result in direct services to children, youth, and families impacted by America’s drug crisis, including exposure to substance use and polyvictimization.

Through a competitive application process, the initiative identified and funded subawardees with innovative, effective, and potentially replicable service models. Funded sites provide direct crime victim services to meet the needs of children, youth, and their families and caregivers in communities with elevated levels of substance-related crime, significant gaps in victim services, and limited access to critical resources and opportunities. These services help families on their path to healing from substance-related crime victimization. 

JBS, with guidance and support from its Expert Advisory Panel and other subject matter experts, provides funded sites with continuous implementation coaching and comprehensive training intended to enhance, refine, and document these innovative service models so that other communities have the information necessary to adapt and replicate them in the future.