Transcript 4A_Schiller_Tailoring Juvenile DTC to Brain Dev

Tailoring Your Juvenile Drug Court
Program to the Brain Development of
Participants
.
Wendy Schiller, Site Manager
National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges
Michigan Association of Drug Court Professionals:
15th Annual Conference
March 11-12, 2014
Objectives
• Understand the developmental differences
between youth and adults within a juvenile
drug court framework.
• Learn how to individualize responses based on
the developmental differences of
adolescents.
• Develop an action plan to refer back to
facilitate the implementation process.
Frustrating Behaviors
The Adolescent Brain…
Adolescent Development
•
Tip No. 1: The JDC should collect assessment information on each adolescent
entering the drug court program; all evaluative assessments should be completed
by a competent clinician or specialist.
•
Tip No. 2: The JDC team should hold service providers accountable for the
individualized treatment of each participant.
•
Tip No. 3: The JDC team should develop strategies based on the interests and
abilities of program participants.
•
Tip No. 4: The JDC team should steer away from premature diagnoses or longterm labeling.
•
Tip No. 5: The JDC team should foster motivation to change through provision of
developmentally appropriate services.
•
Tip No. 6: The JDC team should establish a plan to provide for developmentally
appropriate continuing care, once drug court involvement has been completed.
A Three Prong Approach
• Individualized privilege-reduction to gain compliance
over a single behavior, dirty UAs AND individualized
incentives for clean UAs – Every Single Time!
• Individualized behavior contracts to reward and
motivate positive behavior change in other areas
(school attendance; family connectedness; community
involvement).
• Program-wide incentives to motivate families to
engage in the program, upward phase movement, and
promote a strength-based atmosphere.
Let’s Talk About Drug Testing
• What is your most common response to a clean
UA?
• What is your most common response to a dirty
UA?
• How does the team decide what to do?
• Does the team let mitigating circumstances
(honesty, excuses) change the response to a
dirty UA?
• Why do we even drug test?
What if…
• there was an unchanging, single, and individualized
response to every clean or dirty UA?
• the team no longer had to “hash out” responses in
pre-court staffing to dirty UAs?
• the team never had to weigh-in mitigating factors,
such as honesty (besides incentivizing for it).
• this process was consistent, fair, and transparent to
the youth?
What is Contingency Management?
“Contingency management incorporates a
relatively comprehensive framework in
attenuating the negative effects of substance
use risk factors while building protective factors
such as social skills, family involvement, and
contacts with prosaically peers.”
(Contingency Management for Adolescent Substance Abuse: A Practitioner’s
Guide by Scott W. Henggeler, Phillippe B. Cunningham, Melisa D. Rowland,
Sonja K. Schoenwald, and Associates, p. 3)
Reasons Why JDCs Should Implement CM
• Theories are based on cognitive behavioral therapy,
which has been proven to work with adolescents,
and is vastly used in outpatient settings
• It can be easily adapted within the JDC
• In their study of six juvenile drug courts, Henggeler
et al (2006) found stronger outcomes for those
youth who received MST AND CM then standard
process
Most Valued Privilege
• This is a privilege that the youth values and
will work hard to earn
• Work with the youth and family to determine
what the MVP is, preferably a family-based
reward (i.e., video games, cell phone use, time
w/ friends)
• The MVP is given or taken away with each drug
screen
(Henggeler et al, p. 107-108)
• “Rewards for Responsible Behavior in Other
Domains” (Henggeler et al, p. 131)
– How to target specific behaviors (i.e., school attendance)
– How to add a step-by-step process for the youth to follow
– How to get youth working towards “things” they are
interested in
– How to engage families/guardians in the process
– How to increase communication between the youth and
judge
– And…how to implement these components in your
program
Behavior Contracts
Behavior Contracts
Work with your partner to develop
a fictional behavior contract
Program-Wide Incentives
• Rocket Docket – motivate youth and families on a
weekly basis with an early out.
• 3 for 3 Program – motivate youth and families to
complete three concrete tasks per week.
• Token Economy – track incentives with points or
tokens to create a tangible and tactile experience.
• Fish Bowl – work in a raffle-type give away, which
stretches resources.
Action Planning…Technology Transfer
Recommended Reading
• Contingency Management for Adolescent
Substance Abuse: A Practitioner’s Guide, by:
Scott W. Henggeler, Phillippe B. Cunningham,
Melisa D. Rowland, Sonja K. Schoenwald and
Associates
• Making Sense of Incentives and Sanctions in
working with the Substance-Abusing Youth:
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (Juvenile
& Family Justice TODAY. 2012, Volume 21, Number
2)
• Enhancing the Effectiveness of Juvenile Drug
Courts by Integrating Evidence-Based Practices
(Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.
2012, Vol. 80, No. 2, 264-275)