Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment

January is National Mentoring Month

• Read the president's proclamation.
• Olivia's Story: one youth breaks free from drugs, alcohol, and crime. In case you missed it, we recently posted the moving story of a young woman, Olivia, and her journey out of a life of crime and drugs. She thanks a lot of people for helping her do it, but her mentor's among those at the top of the list. Check it out!
• Ideas for celebrating National Mentoring Month (including Thank-Your-Mentor Day, on January 25) from the National Clearinghouse on Families & Youth (NCFY).
• More from NCFY:
  • A "mentoring hub" consortium in Ohio that might give you ideas for streamlining recruitment and matching mentors to youth.
  • A whole issue of the journal New Directions in Youth Development devoted to promising practices in youth mentoring.
  • Funding: Tribal Youth National Mentoring Program from the Department of Justice (DOJ). Application deadline is February 28, 2011.  There's also a National Mentoring Program grant from DOJ, but as I read it, it's only open to national organizations. Still, if you're eligible, check it out -- the deadline to apply is also February 28, 2011.
    

You may remember Olivia from our our national Reclaiming Futures video, made several years ago: she'd just graduated from juvenile drug court in King County, WA, where she benefited from the Reclaiming Futures initiative in Seattle-King County. She also  had a great mentor in Hazel Cameron, who directs The 4C Coalition in Seattle, which provides mentors to youth in the juvenile justice system. 
How's Olivia doing these days? Take a look at the video above, in which Olivia, now 22, gives a speech to a packed room at the Joint Meeting on Adolescent Treatment Effectiveness (JMATE) in Baltimore, MD, on December 14, 2010.
Olivia's story is just under 20 minutes long, but it seems to fly by -- she tells her story with poise, humility, humor, and gratitude. Check it out! 
Update January 12, 2011 - I forgot to mention it, but this post is just in time for National Mentoring Month!
 

• 9 Ways to Support Someone with Depression
  Tips to share with parents, caregivers, and youth. 
• Submissions Wanted for Journal of Juvenile Justice
  The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) continues to seek manuscripts for its inaugural issues of the Journal of Juvenile Justice, due out later this year.

As of the mid-2000s, the research on the effectiveness of juvenile drug courts was unclear. Now, that's starting to change. In coming weeks, I'll post about new research from John Roman at the Urban Institute about what works and how juvenile drug courts should adjust their practices to be more effective.
 
Juvenile Drug Courts - How Do They Compare to Outpatient Treatment?

Today, I want to share with you a new quasi-experimental study I saw mentioned at JMATE 2010 that compares 1,120 youth in juvenile drug courts in multiple jurisdictions with 1,120 youth not in juvenile drug court, but who particiated in adolescent outpatient treatment. The goal was to see how the two groups differed in terms of services and in their treatment outcomes.
Bottom line? Juvenile drug courts appeared to do a better job (compared to treatment alone) of helping youth reduce symptoms of their emotional problems and cut their substance use, as measured six months post-intake. (This doesn't mean, of course, that every teen who needs drug or alcohol treatment should be in juvenile drug court--!) In general, youth in juvenile drug courts received -- unsurprisingly -- more family services, more wrap-around support, more urine tests, and more supervision.

In 2010, we posted tons of useful links for professionals, policymakers, and advocates connected with the juvenile justice system and adolescent substance abuse treatment.
Rather than warehouse them all on the blog, we're wheeling some of them out on display again. Maybe you overlooked some of them last year, or never got a chance to download that nifty tool kit -- now's your chance. Here's 20 of them, listed below in random order:

1. The Partnership at Drugfree.org's Treatment E-Book for parents. (Follow link, go to first bullet.)
2. How to Get Teens to Engage in Treatment - a proven toolkit from NIATx that increases retention by on orienting teens to treatment. (Follow link, scroll to third bullet down.)
3. What works in juvenile justice? Check out this international literature review, compiled for an Australian Member of Parliament. (Follow link and scroll to third bullet.)

We're sponsoring a free one-hour webinar, “Investing in Reclaiming Futures,” on January 20, 2011 at 10:30 am PST / 1:30 pm EST. It's designed specifically for public agencies, policymakers, and foundations wanting to learn more about the Reclaiming Futures model and how the model has been adopted as a cost-effective juvenile justice reform initiative. 
The webinar will:

1. review the need for system improvement for young people involved with juvenile justice and substance abuse;
2. describe the Reclaiming Futures model;
3. describe a statewide framework for Reclaiming Futures, and
4. discuss the role of public policy makers and foundations in adopting Reclaiming Futures as a framework at the state level. 

What were our top three stories for 2010? You can pick from stories on juvenile justice reform ... juvenile drug courts ... adolescent substance abuse treatment ... positive youth development ... family engagement ... or the juvenile justice system in general? 
What was most useful to you? What was the most intriguing?  What did you pass on to your colleagues? 
You can pick from any story we published here on the blog in 2010.  But just to make it easy, I've listed 20 stories below that I'd expect to  be on everyone's top-stories list.  If you don't find your favorite below -- and I had to leave out a heck of a lot of good stuff -- feel free to vote for it anyway. 
(By the way, they stories below are not listed in any particular order.)

• Substance Use and Delinquent Behavior Among Serious Adolescent Offenders - a new bulletin from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) discussing findings from the landmark Pathways to Desistance research. One of the few things that works to reduce recidivism in this population? Family-focused substance abuse treatment.
• What the heck is "parity," anyway? - the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) gives a quick overview of one of the key recent legislative shifts affecting adolescent substance abuse treatment. (Hat tip to SAMHSA.)

On Monday, December 13, 2010, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), along with many other partners, sponsored 38 young people from around the country to be part of “The Young People’s Networking Dialogue on Recovery (YPNDR).” All of the young recovery advocates volunteered their time to travel to Baltimore and have a very important dialogue.
I have been around many thousands of young people in recovery in various places over the past 9 years, but never before did they have a platform like this. At times during that meeting in Baltimore, I couldn’t help but step back and realize that this conversation was different … something special was going on.
 
Quite literally there was a million-dollar question (perhaps a billion-dollar question) on the table: What is needed to help more young people enter and sustain long-term recovery?

Nine million of America's teens and young adults are struggling with drugs and alcohol¹, yet unlike most other adolescent health issues or diseases, parents have not found a concise path to resources and support for teen drug and alcohol addiction. A new science-based resource called Time To Get Help from The Partnership at Drugfree.org was just released in beta form to begin helping meet these needs.
Resources within Time To Get Help include:

• Learn: Intervention and Treatment e-books for download
• Make a Plan: worksheets and checklists
• Helping Hand Questions & Answers: contributions fromexperts in the field
• Words of Hope: a forum where people can post short Twitter-like messages
• Share Your Story and Journals: to tell stories, track experiences and progress