The Ashe County Board of Commissioners approved the 2013-14 budget for Juvenile Crime Prevention Council during the commissioners’ meeting on May 20.
The five line items in the N.C. Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention for Ashe County total $103,015, with $16,099 coming from matching county funds. The other $85,516 comes from state DJJDP funding.
Grier Hurley, from the Juvenile Crime Prevention Council, explained the budget request to the board.
“I included in your packet a copy of our request for proposals, which I don’t think I’ve done in the past, just so you can get better information on what it is we’re putting out there from the Juvenile Crime Prevention Council to meet the needs of at-risk youth,” said Hurley to the board.
“If you took a minute to look at that, we considered the needs of the youth for Ashe County,” said Hurley.
Some of the needs listed for Ashe County’s youths are parent and family skills, interpersonal skills, mentoring and peer mentoring, mediation, restitution for community service, psychological assessment, and group home/temporary shelter/specialized foster care, according to Hurley.
Hurley told the board the programs written into the JCPC budget for 2013-14 reflect those local needs.
“What we are seeing is that the risk factors for delinquencies and repeating of delinquencies seem to be involving a lot of school behavior problems and peer relationships,” said Hurley. She also said “we are seeing a higher number of youth are referred for court services here in Ashe County.”
Hurley also said there is a shortage of parenting classes to help parents learn how to handle at-risk youth.
To meet these needs, different entities submitted requests for proposals to the Juvenile Crime Prevention Council.
One of the entities, Barium Springs, provides the group home, temporary shelter and specialized foster care needs recommended for the at-risk youth in Ashe County.
Another program called Project Challenge helps youth fulfill their restitution programs and community service.
Also, PAIR (Promoting Adolescents through Individual Relationship) provides students with assistance for peer relationship and interpersonal skills. PAIR is provided through the school system, but because PAIR is completely funded through Juvenile Crime Prevention Council, JCPC cannot always allocate as much as PAIR requests.
“One of the things the council has recommended for PAIR is to move to provide a letter to the board of education and request they pick up some of that extra money that is needed. That is basically a mentoring program which goes through the school system and has been used for fourth through eighth-graders,” said Hurley.
Also, monies with no matching funds from the county is also written into the budget as administrative funds.
Funding allocation:
• Juvenile Crime Prevention Coucil administrative funds: $5,018 from DJJDP,
• Barium Springs: $20,450 from DJJDP and $4,090 from county funding,
• Juvenile mediation: $12,000 from DJJDP and $2,400 from county funding,
• Project Challenge: $26,726 from DJJDP and $5,345 from county funding,
• PAIR: $21,322 from DJJDP and $4,262.
The Ashe County Board of Commissioners approved the submitted budget in a 5-0 vote.
















