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• Is Our Racial Gap Becoming a Generation Gap?
  A provocative post from PolicyLink. Nearly half of the nation's young people are of color, but over 80 percent of America's seniors are white. "For the first time," the author argues, "America's seniors, business leaders, and elected officials simply do not see themselves in the faces of today's young. For many, this signals less obligation and commitment to the kinds of programs and resources that would help provide a boost for the next generation."
• Addiction: What Gets Us Hooked?
  The title says it all. (H/t to Paul Savery.)
• OJJDP Seeks Nominations for Awards at October Conference
  The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is seeking nominations for awards in four categories, to be given out at its fall conference, scheduled for October 12-14, 2011. UPDATE August 18: Deadline has been extended to August 29, 2011.

Last week, School Health Services Coalition, a division of Alameda County Health Care Services Agency in California, released Restorative Justice: A Working Guide for Our Schools. [Be patient: the document can take a bit to load in your browser. --Ed.] The publication is a resource for anyone who seeks to implement restorative justice in the school setting. The 43 page PDF covers the following:

• Introduction to restorative justice and its application to schools
• Use of the approach on three levels (1) as a school-wide prevention practice, (2) to manage difficulties, and (3) for intense intervention
• Benefits, outcomes and impacts from current evaluative reports
• Guidance on initiating restorative justice at the school or district level
• Abstracts of publications and websites for additional information and support.

 
Making change in the juvenile justice system to help teens with drug and alcohol problems requires a strong community leader who can convene diverse players, some of whom are not used to working together. Judges are uniquely placed to take on this role.
 
That's why we're offering two trainings for juvenile court judges new to the Reclaiming Futures model, titled, "Leading Change in the Juvenile Justice System for Teens with Drug and Alcohol Problems." (see below for details). 

In the wake of the images and footage we've all seen coming out of the U.K. this week, as teens and young adults rioted and looted in London and other cities, it will be hard for the general public to remember that young people who commit crimes have strengths -- and have something to offer.
Youth should, of course, be held accountable for their actions. But youth workers in Britain understand that fear of teens as a result of the riots may well set the field back by years (e.g., "Youth charities blast riots as disastrous for image of young people"), especially if the only response is a punitive, nail-'em-and-a-jail-'em-response that neglects to provide appropriate supportive services that will help young people be successfull.
And I expect that fear of young people will rise in the United States, too. Which is why this brief, two-minute video interview (below) with Connie Flanagan, a national expert on engaging troubled youth in civic life, is timely.
A professor of Youth Civic Development at Penn State University the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Ms. Flanagan speaks about the importance of giving youth in the juvenile justice system the opportunity to work together with adults on projects that benefit their communities. Only then do they get a chance to see that what they do can change their communities for the better -- they can use their powers for good, in other words.
(I should point out that Ms. Flanagan was interviewed in May, well before the riots, and was addressing a general question about how to help youth in the juvenile justice system. I just happen to think that what she said is a helpful reminder about how we can work to make sure that youth feel that they matter, and that they're invested enough in their communities so that they don't engage in riots.)
Watch the video after the jump:
 

NIATx is pleased to announce a second round of the Business Practices of the Future Learning Collaborative—Fee-for-Service. This learning collaborative will focus on giving behavioral healthcare providers, including adolescent substance abuse treatment providers, the skills they need to bill third-party payers for their services.  
 
Already billing insurance companies? We can help you do it better. Participants will receive support in either creating a billing system from scratch or improving collections for an existing billing system, using the NIATx Third-party Billing Guide, Second Edition, and other NIATx resources, as a guide.
 
Participants found the first round of this learning collaborative an eye-opener, busting some of the myths that many providers have about billing insurance companies. For example, they learned that you can bill for a service without a contract, by setting up a single case agreement. And you don’t need to purchase an expensive electronic medical record system in order to start billing. (See the billing guide, linked above, to learn how to do this – and more.)
 
For more information, join the informational call:
Wednesday, August 24, 2011, 2:00 pm EST/1:00 pm CST
Call-in number: 1-866-642-1665
Passcode: 213469#

Amy Winehouse died of addiction. Though toxicology reports are so far inconclusive, we can look at her life and know the cause of her death. Many of us know what addiction looks like up close and personal and most, if not all of us know what addiction looks like from the gripping images of famous people struggling in front of us.
Hopefully, we can convert this recent casualty into an opportunity for learning, and strive to create a better way to prevent this treatable chronic health condition called addiction. We know that people can and do recover!
Those who do not survive addiction leave behind grieving families, friends and communities who may question what they could have done differently. To this tremendously agonizing question there is no single or simple answer. We can, however, start to look at addiction differently and recognize that with support, awareness, allies and hope — recovery is possible and it benefits everyone.
We know from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) and others that:

In the interviews we’ve conducted for our evaluation of six Reclaiming Futures sites in North Carolina, we often hear the initiative characterized as “exciting” and “promising,” but also as complex, challenging and messy. Those of you who are living Reclaiming Futures on a day-to-day basis recognize that changing systems is a process full of ups and downs, wins and setbacks. It’s easy to lose track of the larger progress that your initiative is making in improving the lives of youth who come through the justice system.
 
Collectively, the two of us have close to 25 years of experience evaluating programs and initiatives. Through this experience, we’ve learned that one of the most important benefits that evaluation can bring is a clearer, broader picture of what’s happening on the ground. Toward that end, we have developed a model of the “stages of development” that occur for systems-change initiatives like Reclaiming Futures. 
 
The premise of the model is that a coalition carrying out systems-change work passes through five distinct stages at predictable points in its life course. We’ve named these stages:

1. initiation
2. team development
3. initial impact
4. extending the impact
5. sustaining the process of innovation and reform

 
The nature of a coalition’s work shifts considerably from one stage to the next. Moreover, each stage has a unique set of “developmental tasks” that must be mastered if the initiative is to succeed in moving on to later stages.

Eliminating the revolving door of the criminal and juvenile justice systems is one of the Nation’s biggest challenges in reducing the devastating consequences of drug use. It deprives our youngest generations of their chance to lead healthy, safe and productive lives, and often fosters intergenerational violence. That’s why the Obama Administration is taking steps to prevent young people from becoming involved in drug use and crime, and providing intervention, treatment, alternatives to incarceration, and reentry support for those that do.
Last year, the Administration released its inaugural strategy for coordinating national drug control activities and reducing the effects of drug use and its consequences and stressed the need for effective substance abuse treatment for adolescents. The week before last, the 2011 National Drug Control Strategy built upon that foundation and expanded support for these efforts. Evidence-based, early interventions are critical tools to keep young people from cycling in and out of the juvenile justice system, or worse, entering and cycling through the adult system. Youth should not only be screened and treated for substance use problems, but also for unmet emotional, behavioral, or academic needs.

I met Emmitt Hayes about 10 years ago, when I first learned about Reclaiming Futures. He had led Travis County, TX through a project funded inthe mid-1990s by the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) -- a project that laid the groundwork for Reclaiming Futures. (Interestingly, Travis County, TX is one of our newest sites.)
In the decade since, he's continued to serve Reclaiming Futures as a valued advisor, sharing --  with humor and humility -- his uncompromising commitment to youth and famlies caught up in the juvenile justice system.
When I saw him at the Reclaiming Futures Leadership Institute in Miami in May 2011, I asked him to talk with me a little about what he saw as the most important next step in implementing Reclaming Futures. He reflected briefly on his thirty years of working with youth in the justice system and observed that family engagement was the key to success when he started, and it's still the key, despite years of focus on evidence-based practices in treatment.
But heck, I'll let him tell it. After all, he's a lot more inspiring than I: