Collaborative Family Work in Youth Justice

Trotter, Chris; Evans, Phillipa; Baidawi, Susan

doi:10.1080/0312407x.2019.1618886

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…However, it has been found that family intervention can be used during the case investigation, pretrial investigation, or after the verdict when it is voluntary. It coincides with the study in New South Wales where Trotter and colleagues [ 56 ] found that among the 91 families offered a six-step family intervention when the adolescents were under community supervision or after release probation, nearly half (45 families) agreed to participate and 31 completed 6–10 weeks intervention. It suggests that when the participation of the family is voluntary, family intervention can be an option for many families.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

“…Trained juvenile justice workers provide collaborative family work in six steps: role and ground rules, identifying problems, deciding priorities, goals, exploring problems, and strategies. In New South Wales, collaborative family work is provided as part of the routine offerings of intervention and has proved effective in reducing recidivism [ 55 , 56 ]. Workers in New South Wales responded that this service improved family communication and helped the family to solve problems that concerned them the most.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Practitioners’ perspectives on family-based intervention for illicit drug-using adolescents in Taiwan: a qualitative study

Huang

2022

Subst Abuse Treat Prev Policy

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Background Drug-related psychiatric comorbidity or death among adolescents has grown to become a public health threat in Taiwan. In an atmosphere of abstinence, few alternatives or rehabilitative options for troubled young people have caused many juveniles to be driven away from home and placed in closed institutions. The intersectionality of illegal substance use, deviant behaviours, and criminal offences among adjudicated adolescents is a challenge for the development of adolescent users’ harm reduction strategies. In addition, the relationships among the adolescents, their families, and practitioners might be undermined by coercive and mandatory court measures. As developing a harm reduction approach includes minimizing the negative effects on not only adolescents and also their families, this study aims to explore Taiwanese practitioners’ perspectives of family-based programmes for drug-using adolescents. Methods This study adopted a qualitative approach. Through face-to-face interviews and a focus group, accounts were collected from 28 key informants working in youth delinquency. The interviews were transcribed for analysis using qualitative analysis software, namely NVivo10. Results Practitioners tend to refer to an “adolescent-centred model” when describing their work with drug-using young people. From the frontline practitioners’ descriptions, the families of those youth needing treatment services are often vulnerable and disadvantaged. These families are seldom onboard because of low readiness and scarce resources. Although a legal framework is in place, resources, workforce, and programmes to engage and involve parents in the intervention are lacking. Despite the obstacles, practitioners have utilized a variety of strategies to obtain limited success, such as parent meetings, resources referrals, parent counselling, court support, voluntary parenting courses, illicit substance information sharing, and home visits. Practitioners also pointed out that therapeutic interventions are more effective than coercive or mandatory interventions for adolescents and also for their families. Conclusions Since most practitioners have an adolescent-centred work principle, their work with parents falls into professional-centred or family-allied work models. It is therefore suggested that resources be reallocated to involve parent counselling and intense treatment instead of mandatory parental education.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Practitioners’ perspectives on family-based intervention for illicit drug-using adolescents in Taiwan: a qualitative study

Huang

2022

Subst Abuse Treat Prev Policy

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“…T he overall success rate of many widely used interventions for justice-involved youth (JIY) is underwhelming, and the need for more consistently effective rehabilitation strategies is recognized (MacKenzie and Farrington, 2015). Despite the need for additional treatment options for these youth, few jurisdictions use interventions that are specifically rooted in promoting prosocial behavior despite multiple promising approaches such as the Good Lives model and the Family Work Intervention (Trotter et al, 2020;Van Damme et al, 2021;Van Hecke et al, 2019;Ward and Fortune, 2014). Although likely not the only barrier, one potential issue confronting juvenile justice professionals may be a relative paucity of quickly administered, widely available, easily interpreted, self-report screening measures focusing specifically on prosocial behaviors within this populationthereby posing difficulties for thorough, evidence-based assessment and follow-up of prosocial functioning.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Prosocial attributes relate to lower recidivism in justice-involved youth: preliminary evidence using a novel measure of prosocial functioning

Schmidt,

Duron,

Bergquist

et al. 2023

JPMH

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Purpose Though prosocial attributes are linked to positive outcomes among justice-involved adolescents and are a mainstay of numerous interventions, few measures have been specifically designed to evaluate prosocial functioning within this population. Although multiple instruments measuring aspects of prosocial behavior exist, these instruments were not designed to measure prosocial behaviors among youth in juvenile justice settings. This study aims to provide a preliminary validation of a new measure of prosocial attributes (the Prosocial Status Inventory – PSI), which was designed to comprehensively evaluate in greater depth the prosocial functioning of urban, justice-involved youth. Design/methodology/approach Youth (n = 51) were recruited as part of a larger study and were participants in a community-based mentoring program in a large, urban county in the Southern USA. Youth completed the PSI at baseline prior to their participation in the community-based mentoring program. The authors obtained follow-up data on recidivism from the county juvenile justice department. Findings PSI scores were positively related to a lower rate of recidivism and a decrease in offending frequency over a 12-month follow-up period. Originality/value The current findings complement previous work, suggesting that prosocial attributes are measurable and related to important outcomes among justice-involved youth and support the utility of strengths-based treatment approaches. Moreover, it provides preliminary evidence of the utility of a new self-report measure to assess these traits within a juvenile justice population.

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Strategies for Work with Involuntary Clients

Trotter,

Rooney,

Dewberry Rooney

2020

Australian Social Work

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Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare, sponsored an international conference entitled Effective Strategies for Working with Involuntary Clients at the Monash University Prato Centre in Italy. This international gathering stimulated a rich exchange of perspectives, philosophies, and research about involuntary clients. That conference also served as a springboard for this special issue of Australian Social Work (ASW).Interest in work with involuntary clients emerged in the 1970s with Yelaja's (1971) edited work, Authority and Social Work: Concept and Use. The question of whether productive relationships could occur where clients were not entirely voluntary and were experiencing some pressure was raised in Yelaja's work. Those concerns have been elaborated and articulated in Strategies for Work with Involuntary Clients (Rooney & Myrick, 2018) and developed into a research-based and tested approach in Working with Involuntary Clients (Trotter, 2015). These books have focused on practical guidelines for engaging involuntary clients. In doing so, they informed practice with involuntary clients beyond the authority vested in professional workers or their organisations, and the expectation of client compliance. The focus was on how to help involuntary clients even though they didn't want to be helped.Definitions of involuntary clients can vary. We prefer to see the concept as a continuum. Rather than view social work clients as either voluntary or involuntary they can be seen as falling somewhere along a continuum between voluntary and involuntary. Clients in child protection and in corrections are at one end of the continuum. The article by Baidawi (2020) explores the issues related to children in two involuntary systems, child welfare and criminal justice in Australia. These clients would be seen as at the involuntary end of the continuum because they were court ordered to receive services and would be likely to suffer penalties if they failed to comply with the expectations of the services. The article by Trotter, Evans, and Baidawi (2020) reports on a project that offered a series of family work sessions to young people in youth justice. The clients were involuntary because they were court ordered to receive services from youth justice; however, the family work was only offered if the young person and their family members agreed to be involved. They were under some pressure to be involved because it was presented to them as beneficial and as a method of reducing recidivism. They can be seen as somewhere on the continuum between voluntary and involuntary. The service they received was not fully voluntary and not fully involuntary. Similarly, in other fields such as domestic violence, perpetrators are sometimes court ordered to services but are also sometimes pressured by family members and others to seek out services on a voluntary basis.The traditional social work courses that the editors of this special issue undertook, more years ago than we care to admit, assumed that clients chose to see their social worke...

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Collaborative Family Work in Youth Justice

Cited by 3 publications

References 14 publications

Practitioners’ perspectives on family-based intervention for illicit drug-using adolescents in Taiwan: a qualitative study

Practitioners’ perspectives on family-based intervention for illicit drug-using adolescents in Taiwan: a qualitative study

Prosocial attributes relate to lower recidivism in justice-involved youth: preliminary evidence using a novel measure of prosocial functioning

Strategies for Work with Involuntary Clients

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