TY - JOUR
T1 - The Juvenile Justice Behavioral Health Services Cascade
T2 - A new framework for measuring unmet substance use treatment services needs among adolescent offenders
AU - Belenko, Steven
AU - Knight, Danica
AU - Wasserman, Gail A.
AU - Dennis, Michael L.
AU - Wiley, Tisha
AU - Taxman, Faye S.
AU - Oser, Carrie
AU - Dembo, Richard
AU - Robertson, Angela A.
AU - Sales, Jessica
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2017/3/1
Y1 - 2017/3/1
N2 - Overview Substance use and substance use disorders are highly prevalent among youth under juvenile justice (JJ) supervision, and related to delinquency, psychopathology, social problems, risky sex and sexually transmitted infections, and health problems. However, numerous gaps exist in the identification of behavioral health (BH) problems and in the subsequent referral, initiation and retention in treatment for youth in community justice settings. This reflects both organizational and systems factors, including coordination between justice and BH agencies. Methods and results This paper presents a new framework, the Juvenile Justice Behavioral Health Services Cascade (“Cascade”), for measuring unmet substance use treatment needs to illustrate how the cascade approach can be useful in understanding service delivery issues and identifying strategies to improve treatment engagement and outcomes for youth under community JJ supervision. We discuss the organizational and systems barriers for linking delinquent youth to BH services, and explain how the Cascade can help understand and address these barriers. We provide a detailed description of the sequential steps and measures of the Cascade, and then offer an example of its application from the Juvenile Justice – Translational Research on Interventions for Adolescents in the Legal System project (JJ-TRIALS), a multi-site research cooperative funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Conclusion As illustrated with substance abuse treatment, the Cascade has potential for informing and guiding efforts to improve behavioral health service linkages for adolescent offenders, developing and testing interventions and policies to improve interagency and cross-systems coordination, and informing the development of measures and interventions for improving the implementation of treatment in complex multisystem service settings.
AB - Overview Substance use and substance use disorders are highly prevalent among youth under juvenile justice (JJ) supervision, and related to delinquency, psychopathology, social problems, risky sex and sexually transmitted infections, and health problems. However, numerous gaps exist in the identification of behavioral health (BH) problems and in the subsequent referral, initiation and retention in treatment for youth in community justice settings. This reflects both organizational and systems factors, including coordination between justice and BH agencies. Methods and results This paper presents a new framework, the Juvenile Justice Behavioral Health Services Cascade (“Cascade”), for measuring unmet substance use treatment needs to illustrate how the cascade approach can be useful in understanding service delivery issues and identifying strategies to improve treatment engagement and outcomes for youth under community JJ supervision. We discuss the organizational and systems barriers for linking delinquent youth to BH services, and explain how the Cascade can help understand and address these barriers. We provide a detailed description of the sequential steps and measures of the Cascade, and then offer an example of its application from the Juvenile Justice – Translational Research on Interventions for Adolescents in the Legal System project (JJ-TRIALS), a multi-site research cooperative funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Conclusion As illustrated with substance abuse treatment, the Cascade has potential for informing and guiding efforts to improve behavioral health service linkages for adolescent offenders, developing and testing interventions and policies to improve interagency and cross-systems coordination, and informing the development of measures and interventions for improving the implementation of treatment in complex multisystem service settings.
KW - Barriers to treatment access
KW - Continuum of services
KW - Delinquent youth
KW - Evidence-based practices
KW - Juvenile justice
KW - Substance abuse treatment
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jsat.2016.12.012
DO - 10.1016/j.jsat.2016.12.012
M3 - Article
C2 - 28132705
AN - SCOPUS:85008967231
SN - 0740-5472
VL - 74
SP - 80
EP - 91
JO - Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment
JF - Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment
ER -
