FOUNDATION FOR SCALABLE INNOVATIONS
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Mission Statement
Harness the power of art therapy to help justice-involved youth understand their feelings & behavior and realize their potential.
About This Cause
Foundation for Scalable Innovations is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that aims to improve the lives of youth, their families, and our community. In 2021 the Foundation founded restART studio, an art therapy program that is transforming the lives of justice-involved youth. restART studio recognizes the negative impacts that can occur as a result of involvement with the juvenile justice system. We understand that emphasis needs to be placed on encouraging youth to learn from their mistakes rather than punishing them for their learned maladaptive behaviors. We aim to help improve the school-to-prison-pipeline by providing justice-involved youth with opportunities for reflection, relational accountability, and redress from misconduct. restART studio provides art therapy as an alternative to typical disciplinary actions that lead to criminal records and repeated incarceration. This give youth the opportunity to engage in therapeutic intervention that is more restorative than traditional juvenile justice experiences. restART studio helps justice-involved youth use artistic expression to grow from their struggles, gain better control of their thoughts and feelings, and open room for new understanding and self-love. restART studio provides a safe place for youth to feel listened to and understood without judgement. We take the time to understand each child not as an abstract disciplinary problem, but rather as an individual person with unique talents, interests, and aspirations as well as difficulties, experiences, and trauma. This calls for building trusting relationships with the youth and seeking to understand what drives their behavior, including various stressors. The foundational therapeutic approaches utilized are designed to help justice-involved youth: become aware of their inner experiences and outward behavior; process a variety of concerns including anxiety, depression, shame, trauma, substance use, and grief; earn to express themselves and cope in healthy ways; recognize their individual strengths; set the stage for further work builds on these strengths, academically, socially, and entrepreneurially. In addition to involvement in the juvenile justice system, the youth may also have mental health and/or substance abuse therapeutic needs. Approximately 70% of the youth in the criminal justice system have a diagnosable mental health condition. restART studio is designed to treat a variety of concerns including anxiety, depression, trauma, substance use, shame, and grief. Why is this important? Today prisons are full of adults whose journey into crime began when they were young. In 2018, nearly 730,000 children were arrested. Disproportionately, these are disadvantaged youth - children who are in poverty, BIPOC, and those who have experienced neglect, abuse and violence. The combination of traumatic and unjust circumstances with lack of support to process the psychological impacts lead many children to act out in defensive and ultimately unproductive ways. The discipline practices used in response to challenging behaviors too often display an over-reliance on punitive measures, such as criminal arrest and citation, rather than an emphasis on healing-centered restorative approaches. These punitive measures are placing youth at a higher risk for traumatization and incarceration, in a group that is already at high risk due to intersectional factors. Criminal consequences place youth on a path towards revolving involvement with the criminal justice system and ultimately creates a recidivism cycle that results in undesirable outcomes for both individuals and their communities. Why art therapy? Art therapy has proven effective at reaching individuals who have experienced trauma and can help one process a variety of concerns including anxiety, depression, trauma, shame, and grief. The art process has a unique way of directly connecting with trauma and emotion stored in the brain. Art allows one to speak the unspeakable and in turn enables youth the opportunity to release inner feelings into outer art forms. The result is the ability to externalize, identify, and further define their experience. Art Therapy provides a destigmatized way for youth to process their trauma, understand how to channel their feelings in productive ways, and begin healing.