Tailoring Your Juvenile Drug Court Program to the Brain Development of Participants

1. 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

2. 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.

3. Frustrating Behaviors

4. The Adolescent Brain…

5. 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 long-term 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.

6. 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.

7. 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?

8. 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?

9. 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)

10. 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

11. 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)

12. Behavior Contracts • “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

13. Behavior Contracts Work with your partner to develop a fictional behavior contract

14. 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.

15. Action Planning…Technology Transfer

16. 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)