Library: Juvenile Justice

Comprehensive and Collaborative Systems that Work for Troubled Youth:
A National Agenda

"A National Agenda" features five manuscripts presented at the first Shakertown Symposium, which address key issues within each system. The manuscripts examine the philosophical viewpoints of each system, the resources and strategies employed in each system, the particular system's role in a comprehensive network and barriers to such participation, and recommendations. These "perspective" papers from each system provide the reader with an excellent, basic but detailed look at each system. It is written for the professional who is familiar with some of the issues in other systems, but needs more background information and details. Readers may also be interested in Chapter 9, which focuses on the needs of children and youth with serious emotional disturbance (SED).

After examining the individual systems involved, "A National Agenda" goes on to discuss, more conceptually, a comprehensive services model for troubled youth. The chapter emphasizes that many of the recommended actions should be considered "most promising practices" until they are empirically validated.
The general services delivery model has four phases:

• Prevention of antisocial behavior patterns is the goal for pre-school age to third grade, when these behavior patterns are most malleable and subject to change.
• Remediation implies that an existing disorder can be reduced or cured through the application of systematic intervention procedures.
• Amelioration is the appropriate approach if good faith efforts at prevention and remediation have not been successful by the middle school years. This stage emphasizes teaching the student coping and survival skills that will offer some protection from this disorder. For example, school and mental health professional should teach anger management and anger control.
• Accommodation is the final stage, assuming that the three prior stages have not met their goals. A young person at this stage is at extreme risk of continuing antisocial behavior patterns, and accommodation implies a degree of acceptance of this behavior. At this stage, the best strategy is to try to keep this individual in school, and to offer functional work and living skills.

"A National Agenda" can also act as an excellent resource for the reader, by providing specific cites for each contention made. It provides many statistics about troubled children that are useful for writing articles, developing grant proposals and drafting speeches. Some of the chapters also contain instruments and other resources that the reader will find useful. The Education Perspective chapter contains an "Associated Work Skills Checklist," which helps vocational trainers enable youth to acquire the social skills and work habits necessary for a working environment. The Health Perspective chapter contains a table of adolescent health reports and publications in addition to the materials cited in the chapter.

"Comprehensive and Collaborative Systems That Work for Troubled Youth: A National Agenda" can be ordered from the National Juvenile Detention Association Eastern Kentucky University, 301 Perkins Building, Richmond, Kentucky 40475-3127  (606) 622-6259.
It is available for $30 by check, money order, MasterCard or Visa. Payment or purchase order must accompany the order.