Strategies, Models, and Innovations

Working With Families of Children in the Juvenile Justice and Corrections Systems: A Guide for Education Program Leaders, Principals, and Building Administrators

This new guidebook presents strategies to help increase family involvement in the institutions that educate youth who are neglected or delinquent.

Strategies To Engage Families

Involving parents and family in a student's schooling can be an ongoing challenge for youth who are neglected and delinquent or at risk and placed outside of their home and community. There are a number of practical strategies available for establishing communication and building relationships among the school or facility, students, and family members.

Family Involvement in the Field

Experience in the field shows that involving families throughout the process of a youth's incarceration is not an easy undertaking, but is possible. This article describes areas of opportunity for family involvement, as well as current practices in three States.

NDTAC Issue Brief: Family Involvement

Experts have found that family involvement is correlated with successful transition and reduced recidivism. This NDTAC Technical Issue Brief provides the research basis for involving families in the juvenile justice process.

Wraparound Milwaukee: Aiding Youth With Mental Health Needs

Wraparound Milwaukee adapted the wraparound approach to its system of care to address the multiple needs of youth who cross juvenile justice, child welfare, and mental health system lines. Wraparound Milwaukee is coordinated through a public managed care organization. The program serves more than 650 youth, 400 of whom are adjudicated delinquent. This approach offers care that is tailored to each youth. Data indicate that the program is achieving positive outcomes.

Navigating the Juvenile Justice System: A Handbook for Families

Written by the Maryland Coalition of Families for Children’s Mental Health, this handbook was designed for families with children in the juvenile justice system. It was written to help families understand a very complex and confusing system, and participate in the decisions that will be made regarding your child. more »

Strengthening America's Families: Exemplary Parenting and Family Strategies for Delinquency Prevention

This article is broken into three parts: Family Influence on Juvenile Delinquency, Family Strengthening Approaches, and Principles of Effective Programs. It highlights risk factors to delinquency and indicates successful strategies for prevention, including a few that focus on parents. Lastly, it identifies some necessary characteristics of successful programs. The end of the article explains the process to find and classify exemplary programs and includes a description of each of the programs. Some of these programs include Functional Family Therapy (FFT), Strengthening Family Program (ages 10-14), Structural Family Therapy and Treatment Foster Care.

Further Reading

Involving Families of Youth Who Are in Contact With the Juvenile Justice System

Find out more about the benefits of collaboration between families and those in the juvenile justice system.

What Families Think of the Juvenile Justice System: Findings from the OJJDP Multi-State Study

A recently completed multi-state prevalence study was undertaken to determine what services are provided to youth with mental health needs who are in the juvenile justice system and to obtain family perspectives about the care and treatment of their children.

"What Incarcerated Youth Say Would Help Them Succeed: Can Extension Play a Role?"

The NDTAC provides a brief summary of a survey that was distributed to youth for community reentry planning.

A Summary of Best Practice in School Reentry for Incarcerated Youth Returning Home

This article summarizes the challenges associated with successfully transitioning students from secure care environments back to their community schools and the planning, collaboration, and family involvement that help make it happen.

Collaboration in the Juvenile Justice System and Youth Serving Agencies: Improving Prevention, Providing More Efficient Services, and Reducing Recidivism for Youth With Disabilities

The possibilities of collaboration between youth services and the juvenile justice system in order to effectively reduce juvenile delinquency are explored in this report.

Reforming Juvenile Justice Through Comprehensive Community Planning

This publication outlines the Comprehensive Community Planning process developed by two U.S. Department of Justice officials and its results as tested in several communities nationwide. The goal of the process is to refocus attention on prevention and early intervention as important parts of a comprehensive youth crime strategy. The article provides an overview of the process and chronicles each trial community's experiences, including process outcomes, new programs, and new legislation reflecting the Comprehensive Community Planning ideals.

Tools

Tips for Family Involvement

According to the Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health (FFCMH), there are nine principles that ensure a strong and diverse family voice in decision making for individual children and their families as well as in system design, implementation, and evaluation.

Principles of Family Support

This FFCMH handout defines family supports and describes how to provide these supports in order to help families maintain close involvement with their children while in the juvenile justice system (even when they are in out-of-home placement) and to help families when their children are ready to return home.

Partnerships for After-School Success Toolkits

The toolkits offer research supporting the need for school-CBO partnerships, successful strategies for creating and sustaining partnerships, and checklists and tools.

Casey Life Skills Web Site

View the online, easy-to-use tool for youth to assess their strengths in life skills such as money management, work and study habits, self-care, and independent living.