Beyond Reform in Youth Justice: Conceptualizing Carceral Seepage Across Youth-Serving Systems

Dual system youth and their pathways in Los Angeles County: A replication of the OJJDP Dual System Youth Study

<p>The primary purpose of this study was to examine differences in the attributions teachers make toward students in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. The study utilized vignettes and asked teachers to attribute the responsibility for declines in behavior and academic performance to one of five sources (the student, the parents, the teacher, the court system, or the student's friends). The study further asked teachers to identify the extent to which the changes were due to the student's internal traits and external factors, the likelihood of changes in behavior and academic performance with and without intervention, the teachers' beliefs about their ability to impact change, the amount of time the teachers reported being willing to spend with the students outside of class, and the likelihood of the student pursuing post-secondary education. Teachers were also asked to identify to whom they would first refer the student in the vignette for outside assistance due to declines in behavior and academic performance and then provide all referrals they would make.</p> <p>A total of 224 certified 6th -12th grade teachers in the state of Iowa completed the vignette survey between January 2014 and April 2014. Results indicated that teachers made different attributions toward students on the basis of their involvement in either the child welfare or juvenile justice system. Specifically, teachers attributed the reason for behavioral and academic declines to different sources for students in the child welfare system, the juvenile justice system, and the control condition. Teachers were more likely to attribute academic and behavioral declines to internal factors for students in the juvenile justice system and external factors for students in the child welfare system. Teachers reported students in the juvenile justice system as least likely to change without intervention. The majority of teachers across the three conditions indicated their first referral would be to mental health services within the school. Teachers did not differ in the total number of referrals made, the amount of time until making the referral, the amount of time they would be willing to spend with the student outside of class time in order to impact change, their feelings of efficacy to impact change, and the likelihood of the student obtaining post-secondary education. Finally, limitations of the study are presented, suggestions for future research are discussed, and the implications of this study for teachers and school psychologists are discussed.</p>

State Mental Health Policy: Mental Health Transformation: Moving Toward a Public Health, Early-Intervention Approach in Texas

Examine the impact of Colorado's Medicaid mental health carve-out program on children in child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Medicaid claims and encounter data for two experimental managed care sites and one comparison fee-for-service site are used to estimate a two-part model of inpatient, outpatient, and residential treatment center utilization, controlling for patient characteristics. The study finds that juvenile justice and child welfare populations were more strongly affected by managed care than the general youth population, regarding reduced utilization of inpatient and outpatient services. Increases in Residential Treatment Centers use were greater for juvenile justice than either the child welfare sample or the total sample. Youth in child welfare increase utilization of outpatient services. Most utilization effects are stronger for not-for-profit than for-profit managed care organizations. The experience of Colorado implies that a mental health carve-out affects patterns of care for youth and differentially so for youth in juvenile justice and child welfare systems. Controlling for population characteristics, the effects are stronger for not-for-profit than for-profit managed care organizations.

ABSTRACTA number of State and Federal surveys show that communities of color are involved with the domestic violence, child welfare, and juvenile justice systems at rates that are disproportionately higher than their population size. As courts are responsible for decisions that could propel families into these systems, it has become increasingly critical that judges become aware of these trends. This article will provide an overview of the current statistics on the disproportionate representation of communities of color in the domestic violence, child welfare, and juvenile justice systems. It will discuss the factors that are contributing to these trends and present preliminary recommendations for judicial leadership and decision making.

Youth Dually-Involved in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems: Varying definitions and their associations with trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress, & offending

Involvement in the Child Welfare System Among Mothers With Serious Mental Illness

The role of inter-agency collaboration in facilitating receipt of behavioral health services for youth involved with child welfare and juvenile justice

BackgroundAdolescents in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems show high rates of substance-use disorders. Yet, little is known about the association between childhood adversities and impulsive behavior involving substance-use disorders in shared residential care in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. ObjectiveThe aim of this study is to investigate the prevalence of substance-use disorders and their association with childhood adversities and impulsive behavior among child welfare-and juvenile justice-involved adolescents in residential care. MethodA total of 386 adolescents placed into Swiss residential care by the child welfare and juvenile justice systems (37.0% girls; age range = 10–18 years; mean age = 15.41 years) were studied. Substance-use disorders and childhood adversities were categorically assessed using the Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia – Present and Lifetime Version. Impulsive behavior was dimensionally measured with the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory. Statistical methods included descriptive analyses and logistic regression analyses. ResultsJuvenile justice-involved adolescents showed higher rates of any substance-use disorder compared to child welfare-involved counterparts (38% vs. 20%; χ2(1) = 22.21, p < 0.001). Higher numbers of childhood adversities were found among child welfare (U = 3039, p < 0.001) and juvenile justice (U = 309.5, p < 0.001) youths with substance-use disorders compared to those without substance-use disorders. Impulsive behavior was related to substance-use disorders among both the child welfare (B = 0.61, SE = 0.15, p < 0.001) and the juvenile justice groups (B = 0.40, SE = 0.17, p = 0.02). ConclusionConsidering the high rates of substance-use disorders in both the child welfare and the juvenile justice samples, this study highlights that treating impulsive behavior and incorporating trauma-informed care for childhood adversities may reduce substance-use disorders among youths in residential care. Implications for care system practice and avenues for future research are discussed.

sidney goldberg studied at New York University and also with psychologist Albert Ellis, founder of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. He now works as a college counselor in New York City. The child welfare system in the United States is not living up to its name. Rather than nurturing the intellectual potential, capacity for joy, and emotional wellness of foster children, the system too often takes a narrow approach to maintaining only the children’s physical well-being. I speak from my experience as a caseworker, administrator, and creator of a unique program in child welfare. Twenty-five years of butting up against the constraints of this system have made clear to me that the problem is structural. The occasional caseworker who would seek to nurture a child’s potential interests or passions would usually be thwarted by the limited paradigm around which the system is constructed. Year after year, most caseworkers go through the motions, while heeding the entrenched and narrow mandates set forth by their agencies as the lives of children under their care stagnate. I believe another system is possible — one that starts from the foundational premise that all people are capable of building satisfying lives through the pursuit of their interests — and that is staffed by workers who treat children and their parents with deep care and respect. To create such a system, we will need to transform the entire structure and pedagogy of social work school, drawing on insights gained through a careful look at the problems with the current system.

Dual system youth: Subsequent system re-entry after receiving mental health services

Social workers are critical to promoting racial and social justice. "Crossover youth," a term used to describe youths who have contact with both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, are an especially vulnerable but often overlooked population with whom social workers engage. A disproportionate number of crossover youth are African American. Empirical research on crossover youth is growing, but such scholarship rarely engages with a human rights and social justice perspective. African American children and youths have a distinct place within the history and current context of the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. These systems have historically excluded them or treated them differently; now, African American youths are overrepresented in each of them, and evidence suggests they are more likely to cross over. The purpose of this article is to describe the historical and current context of crossover youth, with a particular focus on African American youths, to provide the foundation for a discussion of what social workers can do to promote racial and social justice for crossover youth, including specific implications for practice and policy, as well as broader implications for human and civil rights.

This study seeks to provide a structural explanation for a poorly understood administrative and policy phenomenon: the problem of minority overrepresentation or disproportionality in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Disproportionality is a pressing policy and practice concern regarding how to halt the continual over representation of African American and other minority youth in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. It has social and policy implications at the national, state and local level. Disporportionality affects the lives of youth who are unnecessarily removed from their families or adjudicated and detained as well as state and local budgets when scarce financial resources are spent in costly interventions like detention, juvenile correctional facilities, residential treatment and foster care. A qualitative comparative, explanatory case study methodology treated front line bureaucrats as experts about what transpires within the child welfare and juvenile justice systems and essentially asked those making decisions “what do you think is going on?”. Thirty-six people were interviewed in two localities regarding the role of professional decision making in generating or maintaining policies and procedures that affect disproportionality. Disproportionality in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems in these localities was explored with the goal that the collective insight of these decision makers might result in a greater understanding and explanation of the structural causes of the problem. Participants identified that professional bias is a significant factor affecting assessment at every decision point in the system. Although these findings are case specific and cannot be generalized they add to the literature by providing insights that are transferable about how race is a factor in public administration decision making. The study has implications for policy makers who may need to consider the structural nature and insidiousness of such differential decision making prior to implementing further policies. It also suggests that the colorblind civility engaged in by many public administrators since the post-civil rights era, is a form of collective, public collusion that denies the existence of deeply held racial biases and the reality of institutionalized inequities and injustices.

Disproportionality and disparities in the treatment of children of color has been a growing concern in the child welfare system. System stakeholders have begun to recognize the problem through data, which help identify discrepancies within their jurisdictions. Nationally, the primary concern is the overrepresentation of African American children within the child welfare system, where African Americans represent proportions of the foster population at a level more than twice as high as they are represented in the community at large. In some jurisdictions, however, this is only one piece of the disproportionality concern. San Jose, for example, has both an overrepresentation of African American and an overrepresentation of Hispanic children in the child welfare system. Because San Jose’s child welfare population is unique, they have had to take a unique approach to addressing these concerns. This article outlines strategies and tools used to begin reducing disproportionality within the child welfare and juvenile dependency court system, using San Jose’s experience as an example. Some of the key approaches to addressing disproportionality include ensuring a systems approach (creating a Cross Agency Systems Team that prioritizes services for parents and children in various systems, e.g., mental health, substance abuse, etc.); addressing disproportionality from multiple perspectives and examining the roles’ of caseworkers, supervisors, service providers, judges, and attorneys; gaining community and system stakeholder buy-in by maintaining momentum and providing opportunities for dialogue about the complex issues facing families of color; using a data-driven approach to inform ongoing initiatives and changes in policy and practice (e.g., closely examining policies and practices such as the frequency of recommendations to by-pass reunification services); and implementing changes in practice at multiple levels including child welfare and on the bench. The examination of San Jose’s approach reveals challenges, successes, and lessons learned.

Residential instability, running away, and juvenile detention characterizes commercially sexually exploited youth involved in Washington State’s child welfare system