Juvenile Treatment Drug Court

Excited about the Joint Meeting on Adolescent Treatment Effectiveness (JMATE) conference 2010, coming up next week, December 14-16, 2010? I definitely am. It looks like a closer-to-complete agenda has now been posted, and I can tell you, just scanning it gives me goosebumps.
Just to pick an example at random: Laurence Steinberg [follow link and scroll to the second bullet down] will be doing a plenary session on "Why Adolescents Make Risky Decisions." Since it's primarily Steinberg's research that the Supreme Court has used in its recent decisions doing away with the death penalty for juveniles and life without parole, I don't think anyone will want to miss it.
To pick another example: John Roman of The Urban Institute will be talking about "effective juvenile drug courts." Another topic of wide interest.
But what I want to highlight today are the presentations that individuals in our Reclaiming Futures family will be making.  Here's a complete list:

Consider this for a moment: 

What should recovery-oriented care for adolescents with substance abuse issues or co-occurring mental health issues look like? 

Have that picture firmly in your mind? Okay, good. Does it change if the youth in question are in the juvenile justice system? If so, how? 
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
To aid you in your thinking, I'm attaching a copy of the report from a 2008 meeting sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The report is titled, "Designing a Recovery-Oriented Care Model for Adolescents and Transition Age Youth with Substance Use or Co-Occurring Mental Health Disorders." Check out pp. 36-39 for themes from the meeting, along with specific recommendations. 
Just in case it's useful, you may also want to review this "Working Definition of Recovery." The actual definition's quite brief, but this two-page handout also includes guiding principles and elements of systems of care. Also, check out this report from the Coalition for Juvenile Justice called "Positive Youth Justice: Framing Justice Interventions Using the Concepts of Positive Youth Development." It offers insights about the benefits of using positive youth development to help youth contribute to community life.
Feel free to leave me a comment below.

Events - Juvenile Justice and Adolescent Substance Abuse

• September is National Youth Court Month, and the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) has posted resources about them to celebrate. Also called "teen courts" and "peer courts," youth courts are an alternative disposition for youth who've committed low-level, first-time offenses in which teens hold each other accountable. (Hat tip to OJJDP.) UPDATED: Global Youth Justice is hosting a conference titled, "Establish or Enhance a local Teen Court/Youth Court Diversion Program," December 7-9, 2010, in Las Vegas. (H/t to John Kelly at Youth Today.)
• Don't miss out on the National Take Back Initiative, sponsored by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Held on September 25, 2010, 10am-2pm (local time, I believe), law enforcement agencies are collaborating with the DEA to collect unused prescription drugs.  Find a collection site near you. (H/t to @SPHEREproject.)

Last year, we posted about a hugely important study by the Center for Court Innovation. In it, young people reported that they did not receive a clear explanation of the juvenile justice system when they entered. Nor did they -- or their parents and guardians -- learn how their actions affected what happens in juvenile court. 
Our Reclaiming Futures site in Orange/Chatham Counties, North Carolina is trying to change this and created the video above for parents/guardians of youth entering juvenile court. Congratulations!  (They're also working on a handbook for youth; I'll share it when it's available.)
Has your jurisdiction done something similar? Leave a comment or drop me an email and we'll be glad to post it!

Are you a researcher with a background or interest in juvenile drug courts? Know someone who fits the bill?
Then check out a new grant solicitation from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) to evaluate juvenile drug courts implemented with the Reclaiming Futures model. These sites have also been funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
This goal of this three-year grant is "to conduct an independent evaluation of the combined effects of the two interventions to determine what system-level changes may result in increased efficiencies and cost effectiveness."
Objectives(as listed in the solicitation):

1. Assess the operations of juvenile drug courts/Reclaiming Futures model using established indices for performance, efficiencies, and cost effectiveness.
2. Improve the empirical knowledge base about juvenile drug courts and the Reclaiming Futures model.
3. Analyze the efficacy of combined efforts of juvenile drug courts and the Reclaiming Futures model.
4. Conduct case studies using administrative, collaboration, and quality indices and the sixteen (16) key elements of juvenile drug courts.
5. Evaluate the potential for replication of these models

Application deadline is August 20, 2010.

The Department of Justice's ongoing work to integrate juvenile drug courts and the Reclaiming Futures model was highlighted by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder when he addressed the opening session of a conference held by the National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP) on June 3, 2010. If you click on the video above, you'll see he speaks briefly about the administration's overall efforts to draw on innovative approaches to adolescent substance abuse around 14:40.
In the same segment, he indicates that three more juvenile drug court awards will be made this fall jointly with the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) -- and he also mentions that a summit on adolescent recovery is planned for this fall. Looking forward to that! 

If you are involved in running a juvenile drug court, do you ask any of the following questions when you get UA results back for your clients? And do these affect how you or the court sanctions the young person? 

• "How positive is s/he?"
• "Are his/her levels increasing or decreasing?"
• "Does the result mean s/he just used?" 

Those are the wrong questions to ask -- and are especially concerning if teens are being sanctioned based on the answers to these questions -- according to "Urine Drug Concentrations: The Scientific Rationale For Eliminating The Use Of Drug Test Levels In Drug Court Proceedings," by Paul L. Cary, director of the Toxicology and Drug Monitoring Laboratory at University of Missouri Health Care in Columbia Missouri. Though this fact sheet was published by the National Drug Court Institute in January 2004, it's still relevant today.
Here's my gloss of the article:

On Monday, April 19th 2010, Nassau County’s Family Court Deputy County Attorney’s Office was advised that the county was restructuring the department. Our Juvenile Treatment Court prosecutors, Gregg Roth and Arianne Reyer, were advised their services were no longer needed as of Friday, April 30th. Arianne was later given a temporary reprieve, but Gregg is gone.
This move was devastating to the treatment court and to the Reclaiming Futures initiative here, which had built a cohesive working group over the last three years. Just as when I was younger and my brother left home for the military, it had never occurred to me that anyone would ever leave our team. I am left feeling abandoned and alone with Gregg’s departure, just like I did when my brother went off to the Army. Our Nassau County Juvenile Treatment Court/Reclaiming Futures Change Team is family, and one of us is no longer here.

Juvenile Justice Reform News

• One of the two juvenile court judges involved in the Pennsylvania kids-for-cash scandal pleaded guilty on April 29th. (Missed the story? We linked to a story in The New York Times last year about the two judges who apparently accepted money to funnel kids into a private juvenile detention facility.)
• It doesn't really cover juvenile drug courts, but the Organization of American States (OAS), American University, and others have just published an overview of a survey of drug courts in 12 countries, giving an interesting (and positive) international picture of the intervention.
• Helping kids in trouble with the law be successful means helping them be successful in school and on the job. So you might be interested in this paper from The Urban Institute, "Improving Education and Employment for Disadvantaged Young Men: Proven and Promising Strategies."  It reviews the "evidence base on programs and policies such as youth development for adolescents and young teens; programs seeking to improve educational attainment and employment for in-school youth; and programs that try to 'reconnect' those who are out of school and frequently out of work, including public employment programs." Next, it reviews promising and proven strategies for helping affected youth. (Hat tip to @isaac_outcomes.)

Funding for Training Juvenile Drug Court Teams

Got experience helping juvenile drug courts implement the 16 strategies needed to run an effective drug court? The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is looking for a provider to "build the capacity of service delivery" for juvenile drug courts nationally "through providing online, Web-based, and face-to-face individual and group training sessions."
Interested in applying? "The provider should have substantial experience conducting assessments of technical assistance needs, developing and conducting training on the [s]trategies, effectively communicating and collaborating with drug courts, and conducting post-training evaluations." Deadline is June 15, 2010.