Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment

Juvenile Justice Reform News

• As of January 1st, Connecticut has begun handling 16-year-old youth who break the law as juveniles, not as adults. Similarly, Illinois has also changed its policies and will now handle 17-year-olds who commit misdemeanors as juveniles.
• About 1 in 3 youth reported being sexually victimized by their peers or by staff in 13 juvenile detention centers nationwide, according to a Justice Department survey. The survey is the first of its kind and was given to about 9,000 youth. On average, it found that about 12% of youth in detention centers report being sexually victimized. You can read more about it (and find a link to the report) on Youth Today, with even more information here about what action might be taken federally. Some jurisdictions dispute the federal findings, in one case because the numbers are so different from in-house surveys.

Last month, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) released a "grant results report" on the first seven years of Reclaiming Futures.
You can read the summary; useful sidebars, such as the testimony of a teen from Portland, OR before congressional staffers on the importance of Reclaiming Futures in helping her get off meth; or "Lessons Learned" from the project directors of the 10 founding sites.
Go here to access the entire grants results report for an in-depth perspective on how this initiative helps communities improve adolescent substance abuse treatment for youth in the justice system.

How to Improve Your Treatment System

Do you work for a county or state agency that's trying to improve its adolescent (or adult) substance abuse or mental health treatment systems?
Check out this excellent system-level toolkit from NIATx.


How to Improve Your Treatment Agency

Work for a treatment agency? There's also a toolkit for treatment providers on how to make your agency more efficient, effective, and bring in more money.
 
Related Posts:

• Improving Adolescent Treatment - Tools & Resources from NIATx
• 8 Great Resources for Improving Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment

 
(Photo by Wonderlane.)

Only recently, I shared our 10 most popular posts, eight of the best resources published on this blog on improving adolescent drug treatment, and a list of positive activities for kids in the justice system. (That was all to celebrate the blog's first birthday, in November.)
But looking back over our posts for 2009, I see we never compiled a list of the most important stories of the year. Stories, in other words, that might herald major shifts in policy, breakthroughs in the research, or that were important enough to make the national news.  Those, then, comprise the 20 stories I've collected below.

Got a juvenile drug court that's been operational for at least one year? Want to expand its treatment capacity?
Purpose of the grant: The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is giving away nearly nine million dollars to help you "expand and/or enhance substance abuse treatment services in juvenile drug courts to "provide alcohol and drug treatment, recovery support services supporting substance abuse treatment, screening, assessment, case management, and program coordination to juvenile defendants/offenders. Priority for the use of the funding should be given to addressing gaps in the existing continuum of treatment."
Award amounts: SAMHSA expects to give away 27 grants amounting to approximately $325,000/year each for up to three years.
Application deadline: Grants are due February 23, 2010.
 
(Photo by borman818.)

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. 

Five Mini-Guides to Improve Your Substance Abuse Treatment Program

Want to improve the quality, effectiveness, or sustainability of your adolescent substance abuse treatment program? T.A. "packages" from the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) can help. (They apply to adult treatment programs, as well.) Two of the packages have been out for a while, but three new ones have just come out.
 
Not Just for Grantees

Now, when I first saw the announcement about these packages, I made a few assumptions that turned out to be incorrect:

• You don't have to be a grantee to get the benefit of these packages.

• "Package" -- which I took to mean a combination of services and materials -- actually means "pamphlet" or "mini-guide".  These are short PDF documents you can download and scan very quickly (though don't get me wrong: they're packed with info). 

• You don't have to collect Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) data to use them, though it helps. 

 
The Five Handy "Packages"

In short, every substance abuse provider would do well to review these and choose one to work through. Here's the three new ones:

NIATx is working with selected adolescent treatment providers in Wisconsin to identify and remove barriers to the implementation of Teen Intervene. This evidence-based practice has not yet been used in Wisconsin. It is designed for use with teens that are experimenting with drugs and/or alcohol, but who are not “dependent”—a population that generally receives no services. 

Treat Teens in the Justice System Online

What if you could get teens in the juvenile justice sytem to go online for substance abuse treatment?
Think about the kids who have to travel a long way to treatment ... who don't have bus service or someone to give them a ride ... or kids who resist the idea of meeting someone in an office. 
The idea has potential, doesn't it? 
 
Ideas to Get You Started

To help treatment providers and others learn about what's possible, Reclaiming Futures is hosting a free, one-hour webinar on December 17th, 11am  PST/ 2pm EST. Dick Dillon of Preferred Family Healthcare in Missouri, and a pioneer in using virtual worlds in treatment, will present. 

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.