NCJ Number
251868
Journal
Children and Youth Services Review Volume: 73 Dated: February 2017 Pages: 149-164
Date Published
February 2017
Length
16 pages
Annotation
This study examined juvenile drug court representatives' reflections on the ability of juvenile drug courts to implement the concepts of Reclaiming Futures (JDC/RF), which features a focus on matching the needs of each juvenile with services that address those needs.
Abstract
Overall, three major cross-JDC/RF site themes related to service-matching emerged from the data: a) Collaboration; b) Engaging Families; and c) Recommendations to Improve Service-Matching. On the whole, JDC/RF staff noted successes in collaborating within the juvenile drug court system and within the community, and in engaging families that facilitated and supported matching youth to services. They also identified opportunities for improvement and offered multiple recommendations, many of which they were in the process of enacting, for continued growth and improvement in matching youth to services. These results suggest that juvenile drug court teams perceive that they can surmount the barriers and challenges of matching youth to services; that adequate and appropriate staffing of juvenile drug courts is critical to effective service-matching; that juvenile drug courts must have formalized effective communication systems in place to facilitate and support a system of care focused on service-matching; and that successfully implementing JDC/RF and creating a system that supports service-matching requires juvenile drug courts to balance interagency collaboration and client confidentiality. (Publisher abstract modified)