Interview with LifeWorks CEO Liz Schoenfeld on Youth Pre-Arrest Diversion Program

Social Current has selected LifeWorks as the 2025 Innovative Impact Award winner for its Travis County Transformation Project. Based in Austin, LifeWorks serves youth and young families—many of whom have experienced homelessness—through its housing, mental health, education, and workforce services. The Travis County Transformation Project is a pre-arrest diversion program that deflects youth from juvenile justice into community-based respite services, case management, family counseling, and restorative healing circles to build well-being and prevent recidivism. 

LifeWorks will be recognized at the SPARK 2025 conference, Oct. 20-21 in Chicago. Leaders from LifeWorks and the Excellence Project, as well as the Travis County District Attorney will share their expertise in a workshop about the project. 

LifeWorks CEO Liz Schoenfeld recently sat down for an interview with Social Current’s Senior Director of Child, Family, and Community Well-Being Romero Davis to discuss key aspects of the project, collaborating with partners, and authentically engaging youth voice.  

Listen to the interview or check out the Q&A below. 

Could you please start by sharing a little bit of background and context around what led you to embark on the Travis County Transformation Project?  

Yes, absolutely! Our focus is really on solving youth homelessness, and a significant portion of unhoused young people in our community have experience with the juvenile legal system. So, our focus is not just putting roofs over people’s heads but also doing what we can to prevent the threat of homelessness in the first place.  

One of the things that was most shocking to me when we first started really embarking on this specific project was learning that the number one reason that young people end up in the juvenile legal system in our community is essentially family conflict. It is for a charge called assault family violence, which means that there is an argument in the home, it escalates, and the police are called. Because they are generally required to remove somebody from the home, they often will choose to remove the young person because that’s less disruptive to the family unit. It reduces the risk of CPS involvement, compared to if you were to remove the parent instead.  

And so that results in the young person being arrested and taken to our juvenile detention center and being booked. That experience of being arrested and essentially being processed like a criminal—that can have a profound effect on how young people see themselves and can open this cycle of further involvement with the criminal justice system. From 2013-2019, nearly half of young people who had been picked up for these types of offenses recidivated within a year.  

Often, when family conflict escalates to that point, the underlying root is stress. It’s stress that’s being caused by financial instability, by housing instability, by food insecurity, by strained coping skills, or by lack of mental health resources. At LifeWorks, we just refuse to be satisfied with that as the status quo, And we knew that we could do better. Like nearly 90% of the families that we’re serving, were in an area of Austin characterized by racial segregation and historical disenfranchisement. It was these patterns that inspired us to embark on this initiative, and we knew that our community could stand by our youth in a more effective way.  

This project involves cross-sector collaboration. Can you talk about your partners their strengths, and their contributions?  

Yes, there are three core partners that are involved in the Travis County Transformation Project. There’s LifeWorks, there’s another nonprofit in town called the Excellence Project, and then there’s the Travis County District Attorney’s Office.  

I’ll start with the DA’s Office. They are responsible for assessing eligibility for the program. This means that when law enforcement is called to a family’s residence, they are responsible for determining if the individual might be a good fit for the project. This means that the DA’s Office was also responsible for recruiting and training law enforcement in the deflection protocol.  

Then you have LifeWorks, and the component that we provide is the respite services. This means that instead of the young person being taken to the juvenile detention center, the families have the option for the young person to stay at our shelter for a cooling down period of three to 14 days. During that time, the young person can be connected with LifeWorks’ family counseling services.  

The Excellence Project provides wraparound case management services to the family to help address their basic needs. They also facilitate the healing circles, which are based on the Circles of Peace restorative justice model. The goal of this piece is to involve other supportive figures in families’ lives, create practical skills to help them resolve conflict, minimize social isolation, and build the supports to prevent future family violence. 

In working with these partners, I just have been so impressed because this is an incredible example of how this type of cross-sector collaboration can result in impacts that really exceed the capacity of any one organization.  

What has helped you all make the collaboration successful?  

There are really three core things that have contributed to the success of this collaboration. And I would say that first and foremost, simply just having a shared vision. So, from the very beginning, every partner was just really aligned on this shared goal of reducing harm and developing a non-punitive approach and, instead, coming up with a community-based solution. We all recognized that if we wanted different outcomes for youth and families in our community, we would need to do our work differently. That has been the through line every step of the way—from conceptualization to today. 

Another thing that has really been critical for the project’s success is continuous communication. Collaboration at this level only works if you are in lockstep with each other, and this project team is in contact with one another in some way, shape, or form on a near daily basis. 

And then finally, just really keeping youth and families at the center. Instead of adhering to a rigidly prescribed model, we’ve stayed flexible and have tried to adapt to the program to meet the needs of young people. If they tell us that one element of the program isn’t something that they need or responsive to the challenges that they’re facing, they don’t necessarily need to participate in that element of the program.  

You really are seeing impressive outcomes. In the first 18 months of operation, the project achieved a 94% reduction in recidivism. That is 3% for project participants, compared to 49% of youth receiving traditional juvenile justice interventions. What aspects of the project do you think have had the greatest impact on success?  

I think that the greatest impact has come from our ability to keep youth out of the justice system altogether—from having the experience of being handcuffed. Research is clear that the trauma of arrest and court can really increase the likelihood of reoffending, and so by deflecting young people before that point, we’re really interrupting that cycle. 

Additionally, the holistic supports, including case management, family counseling, and healing circles, makes huge difference. Being able to ground the intervention in community and in tools and resources that families can carry with them beyond the program is essential for them to recognize their inherent strengths and how to access additional resources when they need them.  

What have you learned by centering the voices of those that are directly impacted?  

Listening to youth and families is at the heart of everything that we do at LifeWorks, and the Travis County Transformation Project is no exception. We firmly believe that youth and families are the experts of their own lives, and we really try to listen and to let them guide the way—and we have the honor walking alongside them.  

When this project was being developed, folks told us that that conflict was directly tied to the stressors that they were facing in the home and challenges like food insecurity, housing instability, and financial strain. That’s why we built in case management. Families told us that the lack of accessible and affordable mental health services were a barrier, and so that’s why we built in the family counseling component. They told us that social isolation made conflict worse, so that’s why we brought in the healing circle approach—to help those in the program choose folks in their lives that are meaningful, natural supports and involve them in their journey toward healing. It was through listening that we were able to build a program that families want to participate in and that truly meets their needs. 

What’s next for the program, and are there plans to replicate it? 

Yes, and it’s one of the things that I’m most excited about. Communities across Texas and the U.S. have already been reaching out about replication. We are also partnering with the University of Texas at Austin to do a formal evaluation and ultimately create a formal implementation guide to support other communities in doing this work. 

On top of that, we’re looking at how we can potentially expand the model locally, whether that is through expanding the age range of participating young people, expanding it to other types of charges, or even adapting the model to be able to use a similar deflection approach for families that would otherwise become involved with the child welfare system.  Our hope is that communities everywhere can adapt this model to their unique needs, so that fewer youth are being pushed into the juvenile legal system and more families can access the healing and support they deserve.  

Listen to the full interview online. 

Meet with Liz Schoenfeld and hear from the Travis County Transformation Project team at SPARK 2025. Make sure to register by Sept. 20 to save with the early bird rate.