Evidence-based programming targeting youth and their families with a history of trauma and violence to prevent and reduce school violence and delinquency.

The Council on At-risk Youth (CARY) will hire support personnel (CARY Youth Advisors) at Akins and Travis High School within the Austin Independent School District, and at Manor High School within the Manor Independent School District. CARY currently works with the middle schools that feed into the proposed high schools, which allows CARY to provide services to students and families demonstrating a continuing need for prevention and intervention, specifically to address the transition between secondary and high school environments and the new challenges associated with those changes. By targeting this population, CARY will be able to provide trauma-informed care through school-based programming with the objective of ending the cycle of violence. The program curriculum focuses on aggression replacement and social-emotional skills. The program will target youth with a history of trauma to prevent them from dropping out or becoming involved in the juvenile justice system. CARY will collaborate with school administration to identify these students and engage them in programming, during school hours. The school administration will refer students who have received at least one serious disciplinary referral (i.e., possession of a weapon or drugs, gang activity, assault, bullying, and fighting) to the program. Each CARY youth advisor will be assigned to one school and will conduct the Aggression Replacement Training (ART) Program with 100 students per year over two school semesters.