Corrections_Today_September_October_2019_Vol.81_No.5

nEWS & vIEWS

Trauma-informed and trauma- responsive program environments will also attend to the impact of trauma on program staff and address and meet their needs, to the benefit of youth in care. The Massachusetts DYS has trained staff to build skills in work- ing successfully with young people who have experienced trauma. They use DBT across all their programs to provide youth with the skills to soothe themselves, manage stressful situations and become more success- ful on an interpersonal basis.  A residual benefit has been that the direct care staff are also build- ing DBT skills which helps move that work from clinical groups into the life space. Massachusetts DYS has an external evaluation through Smith College that affirmed that youth are improving in several risk domains as a result of their DBT work. Additionally, over 10 years ago, Massachusetts DYS eliminated the use of room confinement for pu- nitive purposes. This has resulted in a dramatic reduction of time spent in rooms by youth who need skills and strategies to improve their decision- making and interpersonal skills not long periods of isolation where youth tend to get worse not better. The Oregon Youth Authority (OYA) also trains all incoming staff on trauma-informed care. Further- more, when a review of past data showed that about 20% of youth in its secure facilities were responsible for nearly three quarters of episodes of isolation and that many of these youth had suffered complex trauma, the agency created The University of Life, a specialized living unit for youth who are emotionally reactive

due to trauma. Staff have been trained to take a trauma-informed ap- proach modeling self-care and focus on teaching emotional regulation and management skills in the moment as opposed to pushing youth toward institutional compliance. After the program’s launch, OYA saw a 77% decrease in incidents and an 84% decrease in isolation for participating youth. Changing the culture and phi- losophy of a large and established juvenile justice system is chal- lenging, takes time and requires commitment and persistence. As part of the system transformation efforts in New York state, the state-run ju- venile justice system was downsized dramatically between 2007 and 2018. Even prior to that dramatic decline in juvenile population numbers, cultural and programmatic changes that were also happening in many other states were already in motion in New York. Since its origin (in the 1970s), the juvenile justice system in New York has focused on educational and voca- tional programming for youth (later adding specialty treatment services), with an eye towards rehabilitation and not punishment. In 2006 and 2007, the New York State Office of Children and Family Services (NYS OCFS) began to expand its mental health resources by hiring licensed clinicians to address the obvious needs of the youth placed by the family courts. Moving forward from that time, OCFS has developed and incorporated an overarching trauma- responsive model, The New York Model, which both identifies and treats the impacts of trauma on the youth in its care and custody. 11 The New York Model was developed and

istock/Peter Muller

implemented to help change the cul- ture and to strengthen and improve treatment and conditions of confine- ment. Currently, the NYS OCFS provides a wide variety of services to youth. These include the historical programmatic “backbone” services of educational (including special education), vocational, recreational and spiritual services, and over the past 15 years have expanded to include mental health treatment (in- cluding psychiatry), substance abuse treatment services and treatment services to youth who have exhib- ited sexually harmful behaviors. In the absence of a residential juvenile justice system with enhanced and integrated services to address those needs, the only option remaining for many states is adult prison, which is demonstrably contrary to adolescent growth and development and may lead to lifetime patterns of justice system contact.

18 — September/October 2019 Corrections Today