Juvenile Justice System Not Meeting Educational Needs; News Roundup

Juvenile Justice Reform

• PACE Embracing the Needs of Girls, Looks to Expand Beyond Florida (JJIE.org)
  PACE Center for Girls was called "the most effective program in the nation for keeping adolescent girls out of the juvenile justice system” by the Annie E. Casey Foundation in its 2008 Kids Count report.
• Inside Calif. Juvenile Hall, Rare Glimpse at Solitary Confinement Cells (The Center for Investigative Reporting)
  Although solitary confinement for extended periods is considered one of the most psychologically damaging forms of punishment – particularly for teenagers – no one knows how many juveniles are held alone in cells in California.
• Juvenile Justice System Not Meeting Educational Needs, Report Says (Education Week)
  Many of the teenagers who enter juvenile-justice systems with anger problems, learning disabilities, and academic challenges receive little or no special help for those issues, and consequently fall further behind in school, a report released Thursday concludes.

Jobs, Grants, Events and Webinars

• Please share the Reclaiming Futures Opportunity Board with your colleagues in the juvenile justice, adolescent substance abuse and teen mental health areas. It's free to browse and post!

Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment and Mental Health

• NCADD Announces 2014 NCADD Alcohol Awareness Month Theme - "Help for Today. Hope For Tomorrow" (NCADD.org)
  This April, NCADD highlights the important public health issue of underage drinking, a problem with devastating individual, family and community consequences.
• Brief Screening Instrument for Adolescent Substance Abuse Shows Promise (Clinical Psychiatry News)
  A new screening test has shown promise in successfully identifying substance use in adolescents, which is crucial to pediatricians as even low levels of usage may indicate a need to intervene, according to Sharon M. Kelly, Ph.D., of Friends Research Institute in Baltimore, and her associates.
• Entertainment Gets Real About Mental Wellness & Substance Use Recovery With 18th Annual PRISM Awards Honors for CBS, Lifetime, ABC, Showtime, NBC, MTV, Nickelodeon (PR Web)
  The PRISM Awards honor TV, movie, music, online, and comic book entertainment that accurately depicts drug, alcohol and tobacco use and addiction, as well as mental health issues.

Ashley Heinonen writes the Friday news roundup, opportunity board roundup, and contributes articles featuring information about juvenile justice reform to ReclaimingFutures.org. She graduated from Loyola Marymount University and is currently an assistant account executive for Prichard Communications.