History of Youth Service Bureaus
The first Youth Service Bureaus appeared in 1958 in Michigan and Chicago. Their mission was to divert children of juvenile court age from behavior that would engage them in the court system. In the mid-60s, the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice recommended nationwide expansion of what was then a promising new approach to delinquency prevention. Youth Service Bureaus were authorized and funding provided by Congress in 1967.
The Youth Service Bureau had three major functions. First, to be a referral resource for troubled youth so problems could be readily analyzed and the youth referred to the appropriate agency for services. Second, to help develop such services and locate them in appropriate private agencies when gaps in available services were identified. Third, to assist the community in mobilizing its resources to prevent delinquency by developing and monitoring a service plan for troubled and troublesome youth as a group.
Youth Service Bureaus sprang up across the nation. The original mission was, in time, broadened to encompass youth advocacy, delinquency prevention, community education, and information and referral. These are still the four roles that all Bureaus have in common.
Many Indiana communities set up Youth Service Bureaus with significant effect. (Special note should be taken that this was often with the assistance and support of the League of Women Voters.) Sherwood Norman’s work, The Youth Service Bureau, published in 1972 by the National Commission on Crime and Delinquency, documents that the year 14 new Bureaus were established in Indiana, population of the state’s institutions for delinquents dropped 40 percent.
There were as many as 45 Bureaus in the early 1970s but when federal funding dried up, many were forced to close. A number of communities, recognizing the value and merit of the programs and what would be lost without them, re-established Youth Service Bureaus with local funding. When the Indiana Legislature began to allocate a small amount of state funding, the programs began to take hold again. Today, 34 Youth Service Bureaus serve 31 Indiana counties.
Among IYSA’s highest priorities is to extend the availability of Youth Service Bureaus into more Indiana counties, attending particularly to those with higher numbers of youth at risk of delinquency.
Over the years, as national and state policy shifted, Bureaus expanded into the area of direct service both to fund their activities and to fill service gaps in their communities. Each bureau selects and delivers the combination of services deemed most significant to and needed by the community it serves to fulfill its mission of advocacy and support for youth and vulnerable families. Services of Youth Service Bureaus today range from juvenile court diversion programs to managing fully licensed residential care.
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