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                  - Home
                  - Grants                      - Project Grants
                    - Technical Assistance Grants
                    - Curriculum Adaptation & Training Grant
                    - Strategic Initiatives Grants
                    - Education Support Program
                    - Funding Toolkit 
                  - News
                  - Grantee Spotlights
                  - Priority Investment Areas                      - Court Pandemic Response and Recovery Grant Program 
                  - Grant Management
                  - About SJI                      - Board of Directors
                    - Executive Director
                    - Past Members
                    - SJI Budget 

### Supporting the Nation's Judicial System & the Public it Serves

## SJI Grantee Spotlights

FEATUREDApril 1, 2024

### 												The Housing Navigator Program											

The Good Neighbor Emergency Assistance (GNEA) and the Iowa Judicial Branch have partnered to support *The Housing Navigator Program*. The Navigator at GNEA assists their clients in finding sustainable forms of housing assistance in Story County, Iowa, with the aim of preventing homelessness.  They work with clients holistically to determine which programs offered by the state they may qualify for, and then offer help to apply for those programs.  The navigator has helped individuals apply for SNAP, CIRHA, LIHEAP, Social Security, and Medicaid, as well as rent and utility assistance through Story County General Housing Assistance.  The navigator also serves as a clearinghouse for information about job opportunities in the area, as well as other programs that they can direct clients to and offer help. They also work with various collaborations in Story County to ensure that GNEA is represented in landlord roundtables, as well as hunger, housing and transportation workgroups.A large portion of the navigator’s time is spent in administering the Emergency Rent and Utility Assistance Program at GNEA.  Much of that job involves liaising with the Story County General Assistance Program who performs a consolidated intake, working with clients on ensuring that their applications are complete, and connecting with landlords and utility companies to ensure that they are aware that assistance will be applied to the client’s account.  This helps ensures that a client will not face late fees or be evicted, while during the application for assistance process.

The focus of the Navigator position expanded from dispute mediation to a more general homelessness prevention program.  This has allowed agencies in the area to continue to work with landlords to resolve larger issues and to ensure that individuals themselves are not made homeless and can stay in their homes while assistance is being applied to their account.  The program is valued by both the tenants and the landlords.  Clients often do not get charged late fees (making it harder to pay back rent) and landlords do not have to go through the expense of evicting tenants that may eventually be able to pay rent on their own, and then re-renting the property.  The Navigator Program has accessed $219,395 in rent and utility assistance, and has spent more than 275 hours with clients helping them fill out forms, apply for more sustainable housing, food assistance and social security and Medicare.  The navigator’s work has affected 575 households, which includes 590 children, 796 working age adults and 47 senior citizens.   Their work has ensured that people remain in their homes, keep their utilities turned on, and get into programs that help them begin to take the steps toward more security in their lives.  The Housing Navigator has been essential in upholding GNEA’s mission of homelessness prevention.

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### Judicial Innovation Fellowship Program

March 1, 2024

The Judicial Innovation Fellowship (JIF) is an initiative incubated at the Justice Lab at Georgetown Law Center’s Institute for Technology Law and Policy.  The JIF is a year-long fellowship for technologists, designers, and user testers to transform justice across state, local, territorial, and tribal courts. It is an exciting new opportunity for technologists, product people, and designers ... 

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### Advancing Pretrial Justice Initiative

February 1, 2024

Pretrial policies have undergone significant change and advancement over the last decade. In 2013, the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ) and the Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA) endorsed the COSCA Policy Paper on Evidence-Based Pretrial Release. CCJ and COSCA also hosted five Pretrial Regional Summits between May 2016 and November 2018 to facilitate the ... 

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### Juvenile Court Transformation: Intensive State Technical Assistance and a National Training Institute

January 1, 2024

Most states do not have specialized family court judges, let alone judges dedicated to delinquency cases. Even in states that do have a family court structure, juvenile justice often gets short shrift compared to child welfare in terms of court attention, resources, and improvement efforts. In addition, most states do not provide juvenile court judges ... 

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### Leveraging National Open Data Standards (NODS) to Strengthen Civil and Family Court Data

December 1, 2023

The Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts (AOPC) is applying the technical and business definitions of the National Open Data Standards (NODS) to resolve enduring, and common, obstacles to collecting good civil and family court data.  Developed by the Conference of State Court Administrators and the National Center for State Courts (NCSC), NODS is intended to ... 

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### Evaluating the Impact of Virtual Proceedings in Family Law Matters for Self-Represented Litigants

November 1, 2023

The Access to Justice Lab at Harvard Law School and LaGratta Consulting LLC are conducting a randomized control trial examining the effects of in-person versus remote hearings for self-represented family law litigants in the 3rd Judicial District Court of Utah (Salt Lake County). The project intends to examine case outcomes and litigant experience in both ... 

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### Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts: Medical Debt Online Dispute Resolution Pilot

October 1, 2023

In 2020, the Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) was awarded a State Justice Institute (SJI) Technical Assistance grant to retain the services of Catalis by Court Innovations, Inc. (Catalis) to assist the AOC with developing and implementing an online platform to resolve medical debt disputes in Hamilton County, TN, before a lawsuit is ... 

 Read More**

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#### LATEST NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

                  -  FY 2024 2nd Quarter SJI Board Meeting  Read More**   
                  -  Rapid Response Team Releases New Guidance on Implementing AI Technologies  Read More**   
                  -  New Report Shows How Courts Are Improving Hybrid Hearings  Read More**   
                  -  SJI Releases FY 2025 Budget  Read More**   

#### SJI NEWSLETTER

March 2024 Vol.34 No.6

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