A program of family-centered care for adolescents in short-term stay groups of juvenile justice institutions

Abstract

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.

Parents’ Perspectives on Family‐centered Care in Juvenile Justice Institutions

“…Therefore, the translation of the FC program would provide international professionals working in the field of adolescent detention with a framework of how to involve parents. A summary of the content of the FC program has recently been published and is thereby available for an international audience (Simons, Mulder, et al., ).…”

“…Deductively, we first reviewed literature on parent's wishes in family‐centered care in out‐of‐home facilities as discussed in the introduction. Additionally, the four categories of parental participation as distinguished by the FC program (Mos et al., ; Simons, Mulder, et al., ) were also added to the topic list. Then, more inductively, we noted experiences of JJI staff and of parents in the pilot phase of our study (Simons et al., ).…”

“…To translate this approach into practice, the Academic Workplace Forensic Care for Youth (in Dutch: AWFZJ, http://www.awrj.nl) developed a program of Family‐centered Care (FC). This FC 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 (Mos, Breuk, Simons, & Rigter, ; Simons, Mulder, et al., ). However, family‐centered care is hard to achieve in secure residential settings like JJIs (Geurts, Boddy, Noom, & Knorth, ; Hendriksen‐Favier, Place, & Van Wezep, ; Sectordirectie Justitiële Jeugdinrichtingen, ).…”

Parental Participation in Juvenile Justice Institutions: Parents’ Perspectives on Facilitating and Hindering Factors

“…Until recently in the Netherlands, youth detention centers, called Juvenile Justice Institutions (JJIs), were unable to reach satisfying levels of parental involvement (Sectordirectie Justiti€ ele Jeugdinrichtingen, 2011; Simons et al, 2016Simons et al, , 2017Vlaardingerbroek, 2011). This struggle is not surprising, as JJIs originally were not focused on collaborating with parents.…”

Determinants of parental participation in Family‐centered Care in Juvenile Justice Institutions

“…We report here on the first study, from a broader research programme, to examine the potential of parental participation in short-term detention groups in JJIs that recently started with the implementation of FC (Mos et al, 2014;Simons et al, 2017). We assume that factors influencing parental participation in residential care will also affect parental participation in juvenile detention setting.…”