Program
In all we do, we aim to create a healthy and safe environment, one that represents full restorative justice and instills hope. In doing so, we have witnessed young people re-identify their worth and goodness, and ultimately cultivate transformation for themselves and their communities.
Working closely with all professionals involved, we gain referrals from juvenile-justice professionals/facilities, various state departments, judicial districts, and educational professionals. We then seek to provide quality and effective services to some of our highest-risk young people. Through our services, we work with any young person regardless of committing crime, background, and/or needs. Through the connections and services we offer, we seek to have empowering and lasting relationships that will ultimately provide opportunities, lifelong success, hope, restorative justice, and safer and more equitable communities.
School-Based Prevention Services
At the core of FLY's School-Based Prevention Services is eliminating the school-to-prison pipeline. We believe schools can be safe places for all, and we seek to eliminate punitive and oppressive practices that exacerbate harm to our young people. We do this by building deep relationships rooted in empathy, non-judgment, and tenderness.
FLY staff provides high-frequency and high-dosage mentorship and therapy to students in middle and high schools. FLY mentors and therapists center those students who are in most need of support, are gang-involved or system-involved, and have historically had difficulty finding success in traditional school models. Our time with young people focuses on creating spaces of safety, belonging, and healthy community. We aid students in conflict resolution, restorative practices, interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers, emotional awareness/regulation, and their holistic needs.
FLY also partners with schools to grow the authentic embodiment and implementation of restorative practices and mindsets. We believe that all young people can and deserve the opportunity for restorative work, and through this restorative work comes healing. Our highest priority is to help identify and design alternatives to suspensions so that our young people can stay in school.
Community and Policy Advocacy
The core of FLY’s work is liberation. Liberating black and brown youth from the system by engaging in policy initiatives that decrease the overrepresentation of black and brown youth in the justice system. This work has created a partnership with The National Center for Youth Law. NCYL engages with community-based organizations, state and national advocacy organizations, government agencies, and school districts to advance youth-centered policies. This team operates at the intersection of grassroots organizing, coalition building, and policy reform and incorporates the expertise of youth and families directly impacted by the youth justice system to effect change.
Community-Based Intervention Services
The CBIS program at FLY is designed with equity, holistic health, and liberation in mind as we attempt to be one option in the world to answer an important question; how do we center the young people and families who are targeted by systemic oppression, biased violence, and overly intentional complex legals systems?
The services we provide are Case Management, Mentorship, Individual Therapy, Family Therapy, and GED services. These intervention services are part of a network of ways our teams in the community are working beside youth and families who are system-involved. The CBIS program objectively seeks to maintain a trauma-enlightened lens. Through these services, we have the opportunity to reduce harm through healing-centered attachment within relationships and holistic modalities that engage healing within the central nervous system for creative growth and self-development. In addition, FLY practices non-hierarchical connections so those same youth and families can see themselves with more light, worthiness, and dignity, in the future.
We can engage these relationships through the partnerships we foster within the Judicial Districts of Denver, Arapahoe, Adams, and Jefferson Counties, where these youth are currently system-involved. All of this enables us at FLY to help mitigate the continuation of their system involvement and incarceration.
Division Of Youth Services Program
In alignment with FLY's core values of sacredness and liberation, our DYS Program seeks to walk alongside our youth as they navigate the next steps after being adjudicated by the courts and commitment to a secure treatment facility. Through therapeutic relationships, mentorship/youth advocacy, and transitional supports, we work with youth to reestablish a sense of self and break down the harmful internal dialogue that often comes with having been detained. Our approach is recognized as unique because of our deep understanding of generational trauma, environmental and societal impacts, our self-worth, and our deep connection to the community and its resources.
Youth currently detained and preparing to transition to the community are given the option to engage with a mentor/youth advocate, therapist, or transitional services coordinator. Mentorship/youth advocacy empowers young people to redevelop trust in others, specifically the adults around them. This long-term, trusting relationship between youth and adult begins a journey of understanding that our young people are not defined by their actions. Rather, our young people have tremendous skills and strengths to share with others and ultimately, the world.
It is not uncommon for youth to have had a ruptured relationship with therapy in the past. FLY seeks to change that experience through therapeutic relationships that embody a client-led approach. We recognize the impacts of generational trauma, and we encourage youth to reclaim their power and self-worth to break cycles of internalized oppression. Through secure attachments, our clinicians utilize different therapeutic modalities and deeply rooted indigenous practices to provide the most culturally responsive and client-centered clinical services that our young people desperately need and deserve.
Lastly, transitional services walk side-by-side with youth as they prepare to return to their community and family. We seek to support youth in accessing the resources that contribute to their physical and mental well-being and continued holistic wellness.
Referral
**We are currently not accepting new referrals at the moment**
If you would like to refer a client, please email us at:
referrals@fullyliberatedyouth.org