Delivering Trauma-Informed Care in the Juvenile Justice Setting

Abstract

Youth taken from the home and placed in emergency shelter, secure detention, and residential set-tings are exposed to new sources of trauma and danger that may re-activate severe stress symptoms leading to re-traumatization. A juvenile justice center planned a trauma-informed, system-focused in-tervention that included recommended elements: appropriate assessments of trauma symptoms, evi-dence-based programs and treatments to build resilience skills in youth and families, staff training, community collaboration and partnerships, and a safe environment to reduce the risk of re-traumatization. The purpose of this study was to describe the implementation over two years of the trauma-informed, system-focused intervention in the juvenile justice center and associated effects on youth trauma symptoms. Current and past traumatic event exposure, change in youth participants’ emotional regulation, effects of an evidence-based, trauma-informed therapeutic intervention on youth participants’ stress symptoms, and quality of the organizational trauma-informed care plan were assessed. Although efforts to improve participant emotional regulation and post-traumatic stress symptoms did not demonstrate significant differences, efforts to screen for trauma exposure at intake provided important information about participant multiple traumas to assist with the therapeutic pro-cess. Efforts in changing organizational culture and policy did result in minor self-reported facility envi-ronmental improvements. For the practitioner, even when an intervention is well planned, results are not always positive in actual practice.