Greetings to all IJJA Members,

I would like to thank all of you for your continued support of IJJA this past year. It is with great pride that I am able to serve in this position of President of such a wonderful organization. This year has been a whirlwind complete with a couple of changes. We are hopeful that this coming year will be as successful as years past.

IJJA has had great support from the Idaho Juvenile Justice Commission and from the Idaho Juvenile Justice Administrators. We appreciate their willingness to help us shoulder the financial burden that comes with producing a conference of this size. Their help will allow many juvenile justice workers across the State to attend the conference on scholarship and has made it possible for IJJA to invite national presenters to the conference.

Our 2009-2010 Board of Directors are currently working hard to put together the Conference in Boise this year. Although we are doing some things differently, we have been able to secure nationally known speakers as well as some terrific state and local presenters and we are looking forward to a great conference.

During the past year the economy being as it was Juvenile Justice Agencies across the state have had to tighten their budgets and yet we are looking at having more members than last year. We are hopeful that 2010 will be no exception. We feel that IJJA provides a cost effective and quality training for the employees of Idaho.

I'd like to inform you of a couple of changes we are trying this year. We are opening up two floating Representative positions to help in whatever districts are in need. Due to the fact that the ICA board is no longer associated with us, we have had to pick up the slack and had our workloads made a little heavier. Some districts have difficulty filling both of their positions, so we are hoping that the "floating" positions will alleviate this problem. We have also contacted and are working with the Tribes around the state to open communications and opportunities of networking through Liaisons or Representatives.

We are very happy that Stephanie Breach is continuing to be our liaison to IJJA. She has attended our meetings and is always willing to give her opinion and help with our conference. This is a very effective way for IJJA to communicate with the JJC.

We understand budget constraints, as most of us have been impacted in some way or another by the downturn in the economy today. We continue to believe training and education are imperative for growth and development in each of our fields of employment. The IJJA Conference is a quality, inexpensive, in-state training opportunity for you and your agency.

We are excitedly looking forward to seeing all of you in Boise in September for our Conference.

Sarah Bluemer Guthrie
IJJA President