Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment

Want help improving adolescent substance abuse treatment in your community? We've published a lot of excellent resources since we launched this blog a year ago. 
(Yes, we're still celebrating this blog's birthday. Missed our earlier celebration? Check out the list of our top 10 most popular stories on juvenile justice and adolescent substance abuse.)
Here's eight more great posts from our archives, aimed at helping you with teen treatment:

Yesterday, to celebrate the first anniversary of this blog, we began reposting our top 10 posts from the past year, including one on engaging the families of youth in the juvenile justice system, how to handle confidentiality and consent issues when connecting kids with adolescent substance abuse treatment, and more.
Today, our celebration continues with our top five posts (in reverse order of popularity): 

The Reclaiming Futures blog turns one year old today!
To celebrate a great first year of sharing news, conversation, and resources related to juvenile justice reform, adolescent substance abuse, and (of course) Reclaiming Futures, I've pulled together a list of our top 10 most popular stories.
Today, I'll post five of them, in reverse order of popularity:
#10. Six Tips for Engaging Families in Juvenile Justice System Reform and Advocacy - Involving families is always a struggle for juvenile justice systems. So in this post, Grace Bauer, Field Organizer for the Campaign for Youth Justice, tells you how you can get it done. 

Help for Your Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment System

Want to expand or improve your local recovery-oriented system of care for adolescents in the juvenile justice system who have alcohol and drug problems?
The federal Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) has just announced new grants to help you do that. (The grant guidelines allow each applicant to specify a target population; my guess is that the proportion of applications submitted that focus on juveniles will be much smaller than those focusing on adults.) 
Up to 12 grants will be awarded with the anticipated award being up to $400,000/year for up to 3 years.
Deadline to Apply

And some more good news: you have until January 14, 2010 to submit your application. 

What is "Anti-Oppressive Practice"?

It's an emerging framework to advance attention to diversity and social justice in the way community systems and services operate.
In this free webinar, Dr. Laura Nissen and Dr. Ann Curry-Stevens will explain the evolution of cultural competence frameworks and their impact on the fields of substance abuse treatment, justice and others.
The presenters will identify how concepts of oppression, privilege and disparities impact the way in which services are constructed and successes are measured. And finally, the presenters will identify selected tools to increase anti-oppressive practice specific to the Reclaiming Futures initiative.

New federal funding has been awarded to expand the Reclaiming Futures model into three more juvenile drug courts across the country over the next four years.
The nearly $3.7 million federal investment was announced by The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). RWJF is providing approximately $1 million in additional technical assistance to implement the Reclaiming Futures model.

Juvenile Justice Reform and Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment News

• The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) may soon have a nominee to be its top administrator. According to Youth Today, there's a new frontrunner: former juvenile court judge Karen Baynes, who's currently at the Carl  Vinson Institute for Government at the University of Georgia.
• The Annie E. Casey Foundation recently released a report on its Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI), entitled:  Two Decades of JDAI: From Demonstration Project to National Standard - you can find it on the National Juvenile Justice Network (NJJN) website.

In January 2007, the state of Washington mandated use of a 15-item, past-year version of the GAIN Short Screener (GAIN-SS) for all adolescents and adults seen by the Department of Social and Health Services in the state’s chemical dependency, mental health, child-welfare and justice programs.
 
Lucenko and colleagues1 recently used the data gathered through these sources to compile a report to the Washington legislature on the prevalence of co-occurring disorders in people presenting to these services. 
 
Figure 1 summarizes her results for adolescents. Consistent with prior research, the report shows that implementation of a simple screener identified youth with mental health, substance use or both in each setting.

Ever wonder what juvenile justice reform and adolescent substance abuse treatment will look like in 2014?
We do.
That's why a group of Reclaiming Futures' leaders and allies took time out a couple of weeks ago to ponder how things would look in the juvenile justice system, the adolescent treatment system, within Reclaiming Futures, and in the world at large five years from now (follow the link for more info).  Here's a fun, 88-second video recapping our meeting:

What Will Reclaiming Futures Look Like in 2014?

No one knows, of course, not for certain. But a group of people passionately interested in juvenile justice reform and improving adolescent substance abuse treatment -- many of whom were involved in the creation and implementation of Reclaiming Futures -- met recently in Washington, D.C. to make some educated guesses about what's in store.
They also offered their hopes and opinions about what it should look like in five years.