Staff Spotlight: Dishon Rucker, REGIONS Hamden
Perspective. It’s something that changes throughout one’s life. For Community Partners in Action’s Dishon Rucker, an Assistant Program Manager at our Hamden REGIONS program, his perspective has evolved considerably during the last year as he was part of the 2023-24 cohort who recently graduated from the renowned Tow Youth Justice Institute of University of New Haven.
During the 9-month-long Transforming Youth Justice program, Dishon studied, researched and collaborated alongside professionals from the fields of law, probation, law enforcement, education and social services to develop a more critical understanding of juvenile justice, the use of best practices, and how to best measure outcomes through results-based-accountability and data-driven decisions.
For Dishon, who’s currently concluding coursework towards his master’s degree in marketing, the program offered him vast insight, a new perspective, and stronger relationships with the many agencies also working with youth who are justice involved.
The opportunity came about when Keisha Henry, CPA’s Program Operations Director, for our REGIONS Juvenile Residential Programs, asked her staff to consider taking part in the course. Dishon, a lifelong learner, jumped at the chance to broaden his understanding of the field that he has been part of since 2005.
While Dishon admits to hoping to have scored a career in professional sports, he has never regretted the decision he made nearly 20 years ago to work in direct service with children, adults, and families. Along the way, he has often witnessed firsthand that positive and consistent interventions have a substantial impact on the participants served and a lasting effect on the communities we all live in. It’s that mission that drives him to put all he’s got into the young people he daily interacts with at REGIONS, trusting that the life skills, behavior therapy, and education youth learn during their residential treatment stay will be applied when they reenter their communities and succeed and, quite possibly, help prevent other youth from making poor choices.
As part of the Transforming Youth Justice program, participants were tasked with creating and presenting a capstone project that would help solve real life challenges. Dishon’s team included a Bridgeport Detention Manager from the state’s Judicial Branch Court Support Services Division (CSSD) and a Juvenile Probation Officer, and together the trio devised “From the Ground Up: Creating After Care Programs for the Entire Family,” focusing on reducing youth recidivism. Their plan identified the problem that youth who are justice involved are often put into a situation that increases their likelihood for recidivism. They determined that youth need a strong support system to reduce recidivism and often families cannot fill that role due to lack of basic needs being met. However, if families feel supported and are assisted from the first day a youth becomes justice involved, the hope is that it will increase the support they can give their child to keep them out of the system.
Drawing from the belief that it takes a village, “From the Ground Up” calls for a designated representative to sit in each juvenile court within Connecticut to make contact with families from their child’s very first court appearance in order to build trust and tighter bonds with the child’s family and to help assist them early on in meeting their basic needs. By establishing this ongoing engagement, which is designed to continue throughout the court process, the expectation is that families will have all the support necessary to help their children successfully reenter the community. This engagement will continue for up to a year following court involvement, if necessary, providing two years of consistent interaction.
While there are obvious costs involved for the plan’s expanded staffing, supplies and early intervention assessments, there is little doubt that the positive impact on the community would be a great return on the investment.