Mental Health and Juvenile Justice: Building A Model for Effective Service Delivery
background
Over the last decade, there has been a steady increase in the attention being paid to the mental health needs of youth involved with the juvenile justice system. The increasing awareness of the needs of this population can be attributed to several key factors:
- The growing recognition of the mental health needs of youth in general and in the increasing number of youth with mental health disorders entering the juvenile justice system;
- Documentation of the high level of unmet need among youth with mental health disorders in the juvenile justice system;
- The development of promising programs and strategies for responding to these youth.
Despite the increased attention and awareness, significant gaps remain in the knowledge base on the nature and prevalence of these disorders among the juvenile justice population. Further, despite the progress, little attempt has been made to link and integrate research and practice advancements into a coherent and comprehensive service delivery model for youth involved with the juvenile justice system.
goal
To begin to address these and other issues, the National Center, with funding from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, is undertaking a comprehensive initiative that will synthesize and expand the knowledge base about the nature and prevalence of mental health and co-occurring substance use disorders among youth in the juvenile justice population. The goal of this effort is to develop a comprehensive model for delivering a broad range of mental health and substance abuse services to these youth at critical points of contact within the juvenile justice system.
key activities
The key activities of this project include:
- Conducting a comprehensive review of the
literature to identify and highlight
issues and gaps in the existing research. Our emphasis
is to review the literature by specific points
of contact with the juvenile justice system (e.g.
intake, detention, disposition, placement, aftercare)
and cross-reference these points with specific
issues or activities (e.g. screening, assessment
and treatment) to obtain a sense of what the research
literature indicates about these issues at these
key points in the continuum.
- Conducting a multi-site prevalence study
of mental health and substance abuse needs and
services for youth in
contact with the juvenile justice system. Three
sites participated in the study including
Washington , Texas and Louisiana. In each site,
data was collected within three types of
facilities: a secure juvenile correctional facility,
a detention center, and a community-based facility
or program. Data is being collected through youth
interviews using the MAYSI-2 and the V-DISC, record
reviews, interviews with key facility staff and
focus groups with family members.
- Identifying existing best practices and
programs for providing mental health
services to youth at all points in the continuum
of the juvenile justice process- from intake to
aftercare. To the extent possible, programs and
models are being identified that incorporate evidence-based
principles and practices in their approach to providing
mental health services to justice involved youth,
and that provide services to youth at key points
along the juvenile justice continuum.
- The data and information collected through these three activities will be used to inform the development of a comprehensive model for delivering a broad array of mental health services to youth at all stages of the juvenile justice system. It is anticipated that the model, which will be developed in conjunction with a group of national experts, will be:
- general enough to be applied in various settings yet specific enough to be evaluated;
- outcome and evidence-based yet reflective of the realities of the existing service systems;
- proscriptive enough to provide clear guidance to the field, yet contain options to allow for flexible adaptation in different settings and jurisdictions.
The goal is to create a comprehensive model that will subsequently be used by OJJDP and communities across the country to better respond to the mental health needs of youth in the juvenile justice system. It is anticipated that the comprehensive model will be developed and submitted to OJJDP by Fall 2005.
Systems of Care Expansion
Over the past decade, SAMHSA's major funding for children has been through their Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children and their Families Program to support the development of System of Care sites across the country. Despite the significant financial investment in this effort, and the identification of youth in the juvenile justice system as a priority population, the majority of sites have not been successful in engaging the juvenile justice system or targeting these youth in their service delivery plans.
In July 2003, CMHS partnered with OJJDP to provide the Center with supplemental funding to help support the development of the comprehensive mental health service delivery model, as well as develop a series of technical assistance materials specifically designed to assist the Systems of Care grantees in their efforts to better serve youth in the juvenile justice system. This unique collaboration between CMHS and OJJDP provides the opportunity to better link the system of care approach to the juvenile justice system and provides the grantees with the tools necessary to prioritize and serve youth in the juvenile justice system. Specific activities include:
- Partnering with the American Institutes for Research
(AIR) Technical Assistance Collaborative to sponsor
a meeting in March involving representatives from
six system of care sites to obtain their perspectives
on barriers, strategies and recommendations for prioritizing
youth in the juvenile justice system within a system
of care that could be shared with other sites to
enhance their efforts;
- Collaborating with MACRO, a research organization
who has lead evaluation responsibility for the system
of care initiative, to review their data set for
information about juvenile justice youth involvement;
- Conducting a series of telephone interviews with
representatives from system of care programs who
appear to be responsive to youth in the juvenile
justice system;
- Developing a series of technical assistance materials that identify the best strategies for improving collaboration between systems of care and juvenile justice, and provide examples of programs that have successfully accomplished this.
Blueprint