| In 2001, the State
of Michigan and its Family Independence Agency
(FIA) created a collaborative initiative to provide
better care and services to the Juvenile Justice
population under its supervision. The funding
for the JJOLT initiative was primarily driven
from the Juvenile Accountability Incentive Block
Grant (JAIBG). FIA through the Federal Bureau
of Juvenile Justice created a model that leveraged
Federal, State, and local resources to provide
a comprehensive, secured, management system. Early
in the planning process, the project identified
two critical criteria to provide better care and
services. The first was the need to provide a
system with universal but secure access to courts,
prosecuting attorneys, social workers, health
care professionals, and other organizations. The
second was an information topology that utilized
the web browsing capabilities of the Internet.
As a result of the collaborative effort, Michigan
has invested in the Juvenile Justice On-line Technology
(JJOLT) system. JJOLT is a comprehensive, secured,
management information system that allows access
to critical data in order to provide services
for youth involved in the multiple systems. The
network for JJOLT runs on a web server. Authorized
users log onto the network from anywhere and have
access only to the information they are authorized
to view. Michigan is in the process of rolling
out the system county by county and ultimately
it will be a statewide system. Michigan has a
partially operational Statewide Automated Child
Welfare Information System (SACWIS); however,
JJOLT does not interface with it at this time.
FIA has engaged in discussions on how the data
from JJOLT and the SACWIS can be merged through
the use of a Statewide Data Warehouse.
This project is on the cutting edge of juvenile
justice technology. JJOLT truly enhances the capacity
of child welfare professionals to provide appropriate
services to the children and families and also
provides the capacity to identify "best practices"
programs for prevention purposes. As the system
develops social workers, and juvenile court officers
will have more functional access to data to provide
coordinated, streamlined services for children
in the Juvenile Justice population.
For more information on the Michigan JJOLT project
please view the brochures:
The Michigan Family Independence Agency:
HTML | PDF
Wayne County, Michigan:
HTML | PDF
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