
By TJJD Communications —
TJJD has hired a new member for its executive team to lead work on a statewide community-based continuum of care model.
Former Williamson County Juvenile Services Assistant Director Matt Smith will be joining the agency as the director of Statewide Youth Services Continuum, starting April 1.
Smith has worked with youth in behavioral health and juvenile services since 1998 and is a certified juvenile probation officer and a licensed professional counselor supervisor.
At TJJD he will develop and lead a community-based continuum of care model that will address gaps in services, enhance local resources and reduce reliance on incarceration. In this new role, he will collaborate with stakeholders from juvenile justice, mental health, education and community organizations to build a scalable, graduated approach to meeting youth needs.
Smith will shepherd a statewide mapping and assessment of existing resources to analyze trends and data across Texas communities. This role will employ community listening sessions, which will include families and youth touched by the juvenile justice system. The goal is to inform strategic decisions and direct investments to effective, sustainable community programs that improve youth outcomes.
“I met Matt prior to joining TJJD and immediately had respect for his ability to quickly assess systems and develop innovative solutions,” said TJJD Executive Director Shandra Carter. “His sound clinical acumen and natural leadership skills make him a tremendous asset to any team he joins. The agency is incredibly fortunate to have him coming on board. He is the perfect person to really create cohesion in the resources of our juvenile justice continuum.”
Since joining Williamson County Juvenile Services in 2002, Smith has led or participated in many collaborative community projects. At Wilco, he helped oversee a multi-disciplinary team of employees delivering mental health, residential, education and juvenile court and probation services to more than 1,200 youth annually.
His multi-system experience encompassed local and state boards and taskforces that he served on and sometimes chaired, including the Texas Judicial Commission on Mental Health, Williamson County Youth Behavioral Health Taskforce, the Dual Status Task Force of the Children’s Commission, STEP UP Texas, Resilient Wilco, Williamson County Mental Health in Schools Conference Planning Committee and others.
“What I’ve learned over the years is that so many of our youth and families have complex needs and that requires a lot of cross-system work to collectively meet those needs,” Smith said. “I want to use what I’ve learned at the county level and put that to use statewide, so we’re not working in silos, and we collectively meet the needs of the kids and their families.”
Smith says he’s always impressed by the passion of people across different disciplines for helping children and young people thrive and succeed.
“When we can encourage collaboration, we are so much better at making sure kids don’t fall through the cracks,” he said. “If one system runs out of resources, the other can be there to pick it up.”
Smith has trained in trauma-informed initiatives, motivational interviewing and Sequential Intercept Model (SIM) mapping.
In 2016, he spearheaded Williamson County’s implementation of Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI), which led to Williamson County Juvenile Services’ designation as the first TBRI Ambassador Agency in juvenile justice. He continued partnering with the founding TBRI program at the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development at Texas Christian University as a state and national consultant to juvenile justice systems.
He holds a M.A. in Human Services from St. Edward’s University and a bachelor’s in English and Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin.
When he’s not at work, Smith, who played club soccer for the University of Texas, keeps busy with his own family of four kids, coaching and attending their soccer games and other sporting events.