24th Annual Juvenile Delinquency & Child Welfare Conference 2023

How do we ensure that every family and child that we work with achieves their greatest potential? No matter the role in the systems we work in, we are called to do the best, rise to the occasion, and be HOPE dealers! the keynote speaker, Hasan Davis, is a lawyer, juvenile justice advocate, and motivational speaker. A self-proclaimed Hope Dealer, Hasan has dedicated his career to advocating for youth justice and empowerment, and his work has had a significant impact on the lives of countless young people and families across the United States.

Hasan has held various roles in the juvenile justice system, including serving as the Commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice and as Vice-Chair of the Federal Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee. In these positions, he worked to reform the juvenile justice system and improve outcomes for young people involved in child serving systems including Juvenile Justice, Child Welfare, and Education. He uses his own experiences growing up in poverty and navigating the juvenile justice system to inspire and empower young people and the adults who champion them. He has written several books, including Written Off: How One Man's Journey Through Poverty, Disability and Delinquency Is Transforming the Juvenile Justice System. Hasan is a passionate advocate for infusing HOPE into justice and youth empowerment systems. He has been recognized for his work with numerous awards and honors, including the Kentucky Council on Crime and Delinquency Leadership Award and the prestigious Annie E. Casey Children and Family Fellowship.

Hasan challenges participants to consider the impact of their presence, power, and perspective to absolutely transform the experience of every citizen who enters their chambers, offices, classrooms, or facilities. Hasan’s Hope Framework centers the values of procedural fairness through the lens of Humanity, Optimism, Perspective, and Empathy (H.O.P.E.) as foundational tools that all members of the court community need to learn, practice, and apply to shift public perception and experience of it as a system that is fair whose outcomes can be trusted. Hasan shares the overview of his HOPE Framework and shares examples from his own journey that illustrate their positive impact. He shares his experience of often-interrupted transitions through education, justice, and social support systems. Throughout Hasan’s journey outliers and resistors found ways to engage, encourage, and empower him. With the support of these “Hope Dealers,” Hasan transcended his mounting list of “failures” to become an advocate for himself and eventually a champion for others. Through his story and poetry, Hasan shares how his champions (Hope Dealers) helped him complete the “JD shuffle” going from Hasan Davis, Juvenile Delinquent, to Hasan Davis, Juris Doctor. Come ready to celebrate, recharge, and recommit to being the Hope Dealers that you are!

In the afternoon, we put these lessons into practice. All professionals who work with children in the Juvenile Court aim to meet the needs of each child that they work with. Increasingly, however, children with complex needs are falling into a service gap where they don’t clearly fit within the service ability of any particular agency or have needs that seemingly exceed the system's ability to provide. We explore this pressing issue in two parts during the afternoon session. In Part I, we explore how these service gaps manifest for children with complex needs in a dually-involved youth case and how to narrow these service gaps. Then in Part II, we explore how these service gaps manifest in complex dual diagnosis CRA cases and how to narrow these service gaps. The goal in both hypotheticals is to learn about the services and supports available from state agencies and community organizations, and brainstorm collectively with you (the audience!) about how to better service these children and harness your power as a change agent to infuse hope in seemingly hopeless situations.

In person attendees also receive a complimentary print copy of the Massachusetts Juvenile Delinquency and Child Welfare Law Sourcebook & Citator. Online attendees receive the ebook version.