BackgroundTreatment and rehabilitation interventions in juvenile justice institutions aim to prevent criminal reoffending by adolescents and to enhance their prospects of successful social reintegration. There is evidence that these goals are best achieved when the institution adopts a family-centered approach, involving the parents of the adolescents. The Academic Workplace Forensic Care for Youth has developed two programs for family-centered care for youth detained in groups for short-term and long-term stay, respectively.ObjectiveThe overall aim of our study is to evaluate the family-centered care program in the first two years after the first steps of its implementation in short-term stay groups of two juvenile justice institutions in the Netherlands. The current paper discusses our study design.MethodsBased on a quantitative pilot study, we opted for a study with an explanatory sequential mixed methods design. This pilot is considered the first stage of our study. The second stage of our study includes concurrent quantitative and qualitative approaches. The quantitative part of our study is a pre-post quasi-experimental comparison of family-centered care with usual care in short-term stay groups. The qualitative part of our study involves in-depth interviews with adolescents, parents, and group workers to elaborate on the preceding quantitative pilot study and to help interpret the outcomes of the quasi-experimental quantitative part of the study.ResultsWe believe that our study will result in the following findings. In the quantitative comparison of usual care with family-centered care, we assume that in the latter group, parents will be more involved with their child and with the institution, and that parents and adolescents will be more motivated to take part in therapy. In addition, we expect family-centered care to improve family interactions, to decrease parenting stress, and to reduce problem behavior among the adolescents. Finally, we assume that adolescents, parents, and the staff of the institutions will be more satisfied with family-centered care than with usual care. In the qualitative part of our study, we will identify the needs and expectations in family-centered care as well as factors influencing parental participation. Insight in these factors will help to further improve our program of family-centered care and its implementation in practice. Our study results will be published over the coming years.ConclusionsA juvenile justice institution is a difficult setting to evaluate care programs. A combination of practice-based research methods is needed to address all major implementation issues. The study described here takes on the challenge by means of practice-based research. We expect the results of our study to contribute to the improvement of care for adolescents detained in juvenile justice institutions, and for their families.

BackgroundTo provide successful treatment to detained adolescents, staff in juvenile justice institutions need to work in family-centered ways. As juvenile justice institutions struggled to involve parents in their child’s treatment, we developed a program for family-centered care.MethodsThe program was developed in close collaboration with staff from the two juvenile justice institutions participating in the Dutch Academic Workplace Forensic Care for Youth. To achieve an attainable program, we chose a bottom-up approach in which ideas for family-centered care were detailed and discussed by workgroups consisting of group leaders, family therapists, psychologists, other staff, researchers, and a parent.ResultsThe family-centered care program distinguishes four categories of parental participation: (a) informing parents, (b) parents meeting their child, (c) parents meeting staff, and (d) parents taking part in the treatment program. Additionally, the family-centered care program includes the option to start family therapy during detention of the youths, to be continued after discharge from the juvenile justice institutions. Training and coaching of staff are core components of the family-centered care program.ConclusionsThe combination of training and the identification of attainable ways for staff to promote parental involvement makes the family-centered care program valuable for practice. Because the program builds on suggestions from previous research and on the theoretical background of evidence-based family therapies, it has potential to improve care for detained adolescents and their parents. Further research is required to confirm if this assumption is correct.

This study assessed if staff members of two juvenile justice institutions in the Netherlands were able to motivate parents to participate in a programme of Familycentred Care. For research purposes, parents were considered to participate if they (a) attended the family meeting, (b) visited their son during regular visiting hours, and (c) participated in measurements. Study participants were the parents of 139 short-term detained male adolescents. The family meeting was attended by 47% of the parents, most adolescents (74.1%) were visited at least once by their parents, and 42% of the parents participated in measurements. Several factors influenced the parental participation rate variables, although effect sizes were small. The more parenting problems parents faced, the less likely they were to attend the family meeting. Parents with a job visited their son more often than unemployed parents.Finally, a longer stay of the adolescent and Dutch ethnicity predicted more parental participation in measurements. Our study showed that parental participation is feasible. However, the participation rates in the two years after the first steps of implementation were eligible for improvement. More implementation experience where staff could fully benefit from training and coaching in family-centred work could substantially increase parental participation rates.

Family-centered care, in terms of parental involvement and family-centered staff attitude and behavior during placement in secure residential youth care, is increasingly being combined with systemic interventions. Little is known, however, about this combination of family-centered residential care and systemic interventions. This study assessed whether levels of parental involvement or family-centered staff attitude and behavior during placement predicted outcomes of systemic interventions. We first assessed the outcomes in the full sample of families receiving systemic interventions and thereafter in families receiving systemic interventions with a strong evidence base (Multidimensional Family Therapy, Multisystemic Therapy [specializing in treatment of individuals with an intellectual disability/with problem sexual behavior], Relational Family Therapy [MDFT, MST(-ID/-PSB), RGT]) and systemic interventions with a less strong evidence base (Attachment Based Family Therapy, Flexible Assertive Community Treatment [FACT], FamilyFACT, Forensic Ambulant Systemic Therapy, Systemic Therapy [ABFT, (Family)FACT, FAST, ST]). Results revealed that higher levels of parental involvement predicted less family empowerment and a longer duration of the systemic intervention. Higher levels of family-centered staff attitude and behavior predicted more parental distress, a shorter duration of the KEYWORDS Residential youth care; parental involvement; family-centered care; systemic interventions; family functioning CONTACT A. M. M. M. Blankestein