Eight years of impact: DSA Grant update

By Matt Smith, Statewide Youth Services Continuum Director —

It’s been nearly ten years since TJJD began distributing Discretionary State Aid (DSA) Grants. Since then, TJJD has provided $63 million directly to counties to increase capacity and programming at the local level. The application review team recently completed the FY 2026 grant cycle and we are happy to announce that we had an increase in total applications, an increase in applications to create and expand evidence-based and research-based approaches, and an increase in applications offering programs and services regionally and statewide. This is a testament to the success of this program as well as the innovation county probation departments continue to develop.

This year the agency received a total of 36 DSA Community applications totaling $4.5 million requested. TJJD has available funding to approve 14 applications equating to roughly $1.75 million, leaving the remaining 22 applications totaling $2.75 million unfunded.

As a comparison, in FY24 TJJD received a total request of $2.6 million from 24 applications.

DSA Community Grant Recipients

TJJD received a total of nine DSA Residential applications totaling $2.8 million and has available funding to approve seven applications totaling roughly $1.5 million. Again, this means the agency is unable to fund the remaining two applications totaling $1.3 million.

DSA Residential Grant Recipients

Additionally, three departments, Cameron, Harris, and Hidalgo Counties were approved for Vocational Grants through Rider funding.

Thank you for your interest and commitment to strengthening community-based and residential approaches to divert youth from commitment to TJJD. While we were not able to fund all of the promising applications we received, each application allows the agency to provide the legislature, LBB, external stakeholders, and Sunset with valuable information about the requests and how the agency can support more effective programs in the future.