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The following is reprinted from the State of Oregon's Mental Health and Addiction Services email digest. I made a few minor edits and added an image by Marxchivist.

Every year, CSAT sends a small number of addiction counselors, supervisors, educators and community agency administrators to the College on Problems of Drug Dependence (CPDD), one of the bst week-long conferences on the latest drug treatment research in the world. The 2010 CPDD will be held June 12-17 in Scottsdale, Arizona. All expenses are covered for those selected. Please note the January 10 deadline for applications. 
 
CSAT Travel Awards

The Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) will sponsor up to 30 Travel Awards for substance abuse treatment practitioners to attend the 2010 CPDD meeting. All expenses will be covered: i.e., conference registration, airfare, travel to and from the airport, and hotel accommodation. To be eligible, candidates must hold full-time employment as a director or clinical supervisor in a substance abuse treatment program and not be an employee of the federal government. Further, your direct supervisor will need to agree to allow you to attend if you are selected. Only one award will be given to any specific program. Previous CSAT travel award recipients are not eligible to apply. Applicants will be sent e-mails by the end of March indicating award status. 

Poetry can heal traumatized youth. It also creates a community of openness, connectedness, and strength, which helps treatment providers. Poetry particularly serves teens who have a hard time expressing themselves. Here is a poem by Payton (pseudonym), a first-time writer in juvenile detention:
I am 15 and I am lost don't know
what to do.  lost because I get no love.
lost because I messed up my life.
lost because my dad left for some
women.  lost because I got caught
up in gangs.  lost because I lost
real friends my family.  lost
because I screwed my life
up.  lost because I lost
respect and trust.  lost
because I am a kleptomaniac.
lost because I don't show enough
love or respect to peers or elders.
lost because I am always in detention.
lost because I got nowhere to hide.
lost because I got no guardians.

 Juvenile Justice: Tribal Youth Reports, SAMHSA Grantwriting Tips, and a Brief Reentry Guide

• Two new crime-related reports on Native American communities: the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) reports on its Tribal Youth Program, and the Department of Justice released Jails in Indian Country 2008, which includes coverage of juvenile facilities.
• Want tips on how to address gangs in your community? OJJDP has created an online tool that shares its Comprehensive Gang Model Overview and other useful tools. 
• If you're seeking a grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA), you'll want to check out the agency's September/October newsletter. On page 15, you'll find tips from a long-time reviewer for the agency on how to write a winning grant proposal. (Hat tip to the Addiction Technology Transfer Center Network.)

Big news in the field of juvenile justice reform: initial results from the "Pathways to Desistance" research project are now available.  And the implications for juvenile justice policy -- and opportunities for debate -- are significant. 
Conducted by the MacArthur Foundation's Models for Change initiative, "Pathways to Desistance" is a large, multi-site project that follows 1,354 racially and ethnically diverse juvenile offenders over seven years and tries to answer the basic question we all want the answer to: what combination of sanctions and services helps kids stop re-offending, i.e., desist from crime?  
Specifically, it's looking at youth who committed "the most serious felonies that come before the court, including murder, robbery, aggravated assault, sex offenses, and kidnapping" between the ages of 14 and 17. Over 90% of the followup interviews -- over 25,000 of them -- have been completed so far.
One key finding:

Juvenile Justice System News - An Important Survey, plus Webinars and One Grant Opportunity

• Please take or pass on this quick online survey for kids who used to be in the juvenile justice system, family members of kids in the system, and people of color new to the field of juvenile justice reform. The National Juvenile Justice Network (NJJN) compiled the survey to help shape its first Juvenile Justice Leadership Development Institute, which it plans to hold in July 2010. The mission of the Institute is to create a "more effective juvenile justice reform movement by developing a strong base of well prepared and well trained advocates who reflect the communities most affected by juvenile justice system practices and policies, with a particular focus on cultivating and supporting leaders of color, youth and family members." Hurry, though, the deadline to complete it is Monday, December 14th!

Concerned about youth who are victims of violence, or who've witnessed it? 
Practitioners, researchers, and policymakers can get news and resources from the Safe Start Center, run by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP).
Places to start:

• “Issue Brief #1: Understanding Children’s Exposure to Violence”
• “Healing the Invisible Wounds: Children’s Exposure to Violence”
• Victimization and Juvenile Offending, from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, which also put out Helping Traumatized Children: Tips for Judges
• Judges might also be interested in the Judicial Checklist for Children and Youth Exposed to Violence from the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ)

You can also follow the Safe Start Center on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
 

Juvenile Justice Reform & Related News

• "How long are we as a nation going to allow justice policy to be determined by anecdote, storytelling and worst-case scenarios?" James Bell asks in an excellent op-ed he published just before Thanksgiving in support of the renewal of the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA). A week earlier, he also published another op-ed, in which he eloquently attacked juvenile life without parole.
• This week, the W. Haywood Burns Institute (which Bell directs) issued The Keeper and the Kept (see image at right), the second in a series of excellent reports on the nature of disproportionate minority confinement in the juvenile justice system and how to address it. Check it out.
• A new national standard for defining juvenile recidivism may be on the way, reports Youth Today.
  

Got a juvenile drug court? Considering starting one?
The MacArthur Foundation's juvenile justice reform initiative, Models for Change, recently released a set of evidence-based practice recommendations for juvenile drug courts.
Developed in a statewide project in Louisiana, the recommendations focus on

1. screening and assessment;
2. improving alcohol and drug treatment (along with treatment for co-occurring disorders); and
3. outcome monitoring.

(Hat tip to Christa Myers of the  Reclaiming Futures initiative in Hocking County, Ohio.)
Related Post:

• Here's a handy list of existing evidence-based treatment programs, information about evidence-based practices and tips for implementing your own practice.
• Check out this post for research on what works best when implementing an EBP.

To help organizations seeking a time- and cost-efficient assessment for adolescents, Inflexxion developed the Comprehensive Health Assessment for Teens, or CHAT, which has been found to be both valid and reliable in research funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
The CHAT format is based on the ASI-MV Connect, a self-administered, multimedia version of the Addiction Severity Index (ASI) developed by Dr. A. Thomas McLellan. A number of treatment centers, such as the Center for Drug-Free Living in Orlando, Florida, are using the ASI-MV Connect as part of the NIATx campaign to streamline their assessment procedures [PDF].