Risky or Needy? Dynamic Risk Factors and Delinquent Behavior of Adolescents in Secure Residential Youth Care

Cultural and Religious Equity and Disparity in the Group Climate Experience of Moroccan Girls in Dutch Residential Youth Care Settings

BACKGROUND

The group climate within residential youth care institutions is considered a transactional process, both within a group of youth from various cultural backgrounds and between them and their group workers. The ongoing interaction between the cultural characteristics of these girls may influence the quality of the group climate. This study aimed to provide an in-depth account of the living group climate experiences and perceptions of Dutch girls with a Moroccan cultural background in Dutch residential groups.

METHOD

Interpretative phenomenological analysis was employed to explore the girls' group climate experiences.

RESULT

Three major themes emerged, namely (a) level of involvement of Moroccan girls in their living group, (b) perceptions of Moroccan girls' sense of belonging in a living group, and (c) cultural and religious equality or disparity results in two interaction patterns. The findings revealed that equality or disparity in language, culture, and religion affect Moroccan girls' experiences and perceptions of the living group climate. A crucial finding was that cultural and religious disparity leads to interaction patterns wherein the girls pre-emptively exclude themselves from receiving support from native group workers.

CONCLUSION

Professionals must be aware of the cultural and religious dynamics, including the interplay and impact of cultural and religious equality and disparity, influencing Moroccan girls' group climate experiences.

Families in transition (FIT) study protocol: feasibility, acceptability and preliminary effects of a group-based parent training in parents of youth in psychiatric residential treatment

INTRODUCTION

Although adolescents make treatment gains in psychiatric residential treatment (RT), they experience significant difficulty adapting to the community and often do not sustain treatment gains long term. Their parents are often not provided with the necessary support or behaviour management skillset to bridge the gap between RT and home. Parent training, a gold standard behaviour management strategy, may be beneficial for parents of these youth and web-based parent training programmes may engage this difficult-to-reach population. This study focuses on a hybrid parent training programme that combines Parenting Wisely (PW), a web-based parent training with facilitated discussion groups (Parenting Wisely for Residential Treatment (PWRT)). This study aims to: (1) establish the feasibility and acceptability of PWRT, (2) evaluate whether PWRT engages target mechanisms (parental self-efficacy, parenting behaviours, social support, family function) and (3) determine the effects of PWRT on adolescent outcomes (internalising and externalising behaviours, placement restrictiveness).

METHODS AND ANALYSIS

In this randomised control trial, parents (n=60) will be randomly assigned to PWRT or treatment as usual. Each week for 6 weeks, parents in the PWRT condition will complete two PW modules (20 min each) and attend one discussion group via Zoom (90 min). Adolescents (n=60) will not receive intervention; however, we will evaluate the feasibility of adolescent data collection for future studies. Data from parents and adolescents will be collected at baseline, post intervention (6 weeks post baseline) and 6 months post baseline to allow for a robust understanding of the longer-term effects of PWRT on treatment gain maintenance.

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION

The study has been approved by The Ohio State University Institutional Review Board (protocol number 2022B0315). The outcomes of the study will be shared through presentations at both local and national conferences, publications in peer-reviewed journals and disseminated to the families and organisations that helped to facilitate the project.

TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER

NCT05764369 (V.1, December 2022).

Self-perceived views on offender rehabilitation in detained adolescent boys: a qualitative analysis in the context of the good lives model

Introduction

An upcoming offender rehabilitation model, the Good Lives Model (GLM), proposes that effective offender rehabilitation should adopt a dual focus: reducing recidivism risk as well as enhancing the offender's well-being. To achieve this, the GLM suggests rehabilitation should include the prosocial fulfilment of a universal set of human needs termed "primary goods." A focus on primary goods attainment and well-being is hypothesized to improve treatment motivation and achieve more sustainable desistance from future offending. Although this model sounds promising, empirical evidence for these assumptions is limited, especially among youth.

Methods

Twenty Flemish and Dutch detained adolescent boys (14 to 17 years old at the time of their arrest) were interviewed during their detention using a semi-structured interview. They were asked about their well-being, needs and goals during rehabilitation, their treatment motivation, and their views on recidivism and rehabilitation.

Results

The results show that a match between the boys' well-being needs, and the treatment goals set in collaboration with the institution could improve treatment motivation and rehabilitation efforts. The boys also mentioned other factors with a positive impact on their treatment motivation: increased levels of freedom and autonomy; having a future (prosocial) perspective; investing in a therapeutic alliance; and, working on individual factors (i.e., improving coping skills, school or work skills, and relationships with prosocial friends and family).

Discussion

These factors closely align with working on the GLM primary goods of "excellence in work and play," "excellence in agency," and "relatedness," which can be helpful in enhancing well-being and treatment motivation in offender rehabilitation.

Parenting a Child in Residential Treatment: Mother's Perceptions of Programming Needs

The purpose of this study was to describe the experiences and perspectives of mothers with children in residential treatment (RT) regarding parenting, discharge planning, and home-based safety. One-hour interviews were conducted over the phone with 15 mothers. Transcripts were analyzed using a content analysis approach. Three themes were generated including parenting a child in RT, unprepared for discharge, and crisis intervention in the home. This study contributes insight into the lives of an underserved population with implications to inform future research interventions and clinical guidelines to address the needs of families with children in RT.

Quality of Life of People with Severe Mental Health Problems: Testing an Interactive Model

Improvement of subjective quality of life (QoL) is seen as an important treatment outcome in clinical practice. The aim of this study is to test the theoretical model of Cummins, which includes a homeostatic management system. According to this model, objective variables are almost irrelevant to general well-being, while the feeling of having an influence on one's circumstances (perceived deficit) is related to subjective QoL. The variables of the Cummins model were operationalised based on the Lancashire Quality of Life Profile, a structured interview to assess the subjective QoL of people with severe mental health problems. The Cummins model was tested using structural equation modelling and a mediator model between Objective QoL, Subjective QoL and Perceived Deficit. Subjective QoL and General Well-Being were significantly related and having a meaningful perspective in life was related to General Well-Being. Contrary to the Cummins model, both Objective QoL and Perceived Deficit had a significant relation to Subjective QoL and Perceived Deficit was a partial mediator between Objective QoL and Subjective QoL. Cummins' theoretical model was partially confirmed. The current study suggests that meaningful (treatment) evaluation of subjective QoL can only be performed if objective QoL, General Well-Being and subjective evaluation (Perceived Deficit and Framework) are taken into account.

Subjectively different but objectively the same? Three profiles of QoL in people with severe mental health problems

Purpose

Quality of life (QoL) is a broad outcome that is often used to assess the impact of treatment and care interventions in mental health services. QoL, however, is known to be influenced by individual values and preferences. To investigate this heterogeneity on the individual level, this study aimed to distinguish classes with distinct QoL profiles in a broad group of people with severe mental health problems and to identify the QoL domains that are most strongly related to the classes.

Methods

QoL data of seven studies that used the Lancashire quality of life profile (LQoLP) were used in a latent class analysis. Sociodemographic variables, health-related variables, and measures of well-being were used to characterise the classes. Additionally, univariate entropy scores were used to assess the strength of the association between the ten LQoLP domains and the latent classes.

Results

Two of the three indices of fit pointed towards a three-class model. The three classes differed significantly on all of the LQoLP domains, on well-being, and on ‘being in an intimate relationship’. No differences were found for the majority of the health-related and sociodemographic variables. The LQoLP domains ‘family relations’, ‘positive self-esteem’, and ‘negative self-esteem’ were most strongly related to the latent classes.

Conclusions

The identification of three distinct classes of QoL scores re-emphasises the heterogenic nature of QoL. The lack of differences in sociodemographic or health-related characteristics between the three classes suggests that QoL is primarily determined by subjective, personal evaluations, rather than by objective characteristics and circumstances.

Using a Videogame Intervention to Reduce Anxiety and Externalizing Problems among Youths in Residential Care: an Initial Randomized Controlled Trial

Residential care is among the most intensive forms of treatment in youth care. It serves youths with severe behavioral problems and is primarily focused on targeting externalizing problems. Despite best efforts, effect sizes remain moderate, which may be due to the disregarding of internalizing symptoms - in particular anxiety - and to limitations regarding the delivery model of interventions. This initial randomized controlled trial (n = 37) aimed to examine the effectiveness of a biofeedback videogame intervention (Dojo) as an addition to treatment as usual for youths with and without intellectual disability (ID) in residential care with clinical levels of anxiety and externalizing problems. Dojo targets both anxiety and externalizing problems, and incorporates the principles of conventional treatment, while addressing its limitations. Youths were randomly assigned to play Dojo (eight 30-min gameplay sessions) or to treatment as usual (TAU). Measurements of anxiety and externalizing problems were conducted at baseline, posttreatment, and 4-months follow-up through youths' self-report and mentor-report. Completers-only analyses revealed decreases in self-reported anxiety and externalizing problems, and mentor-reported anxiety at posttreatment for participants in the Dojo condition compared to the control condition. Only mentor-reported anxiety was maintained at follow-up. No effect was found for mentor-reported externalizing problems. These findings provided preliminary evidence that Dojo is a promising, innovative intervention that engages high-risk youths. Practical implications are discussed.

The Predictive Validity of the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth for Young Spanish Offenders

The present study examined the predictive validity of the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY) in a group of young Spanish offenders. The sample is made up of 594 minors from the Juvenile Court, between the ages of 14 and 18 at the time they committed the delinquent act. The SAVRY was able to differentiate between low and high-risk younger offenders. Mean scores on risk factor are greater in the group of recidivist offenders, the group of non-recidivist shows higher mean scores in Protective domain. The accuracy of the instrument is high (AUC_{RiskTotalScore} = 0.737 and AUC_{SummaryRiskRating} = 0.748). An approximation of the predictive validity study of the SAVRY in Spanish younger offenders is presented. The results obtained support the SAVRY good functioning with not English samples.

The prospective usefulness of callous-unemotional traits and conduct disorder in predicting treatment engagement among detained girls

Although treatment engagement (TE) is crucial for treatment success it is not well known how likely detained girls are to engage in treatment and what features may impede them from doing so. This study is the first to examine the prognostic usefulness of two features of potential interest, being callous-unemotional (CU) traits and conduct disorder (CD), in relation to TE. Detained girls and their parents (n = 75) were interviewed with the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children to assess CD, and completed the Antisocial Process Screening Device to assess CU traits dimensionally and categorically as in the new diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, fifth edition (DSM-5) CU-based specifier. One to two months later, the girls reported how much they engaged in treatment. At the zero-order level, self-, but not parent-reported CU traits and CD were predictive of lower levels of TE. The incorporation of CU traits into a diagnosis of CD identified girls with lower levels of future TE, a finding that held across different informants. Of note, the aforementioned findings only became apparent when using a dimensional measure of CU traits, and not when using the categorical measure of CU traits currently included in DSM-5. This study showed that CU traits can help developing an understanding of what factors hinder TE among detained girls. Our findings also support recommendations to incorporate CU traits into the CD diagnosis, and suggest that dimensional approaches to do so may yield relevant information about future levels of TE.

Identifying Risk and Protective Factors in Recidivist Juvenile Offenders: A Decision Tree Approach

Research on juvenile justice aims to identify profiles of risk and protective factors in juvenile offenders. This paper presents a study of profiles of risk factors that influence young offenders toward committing sanctionable antisocial behavior (S-ASB). Decision tree analysis is used as a multivariate approach to the phenomenon of repeated sanctionable antisocial behavior in juvenile offenders in Spain. The study sample was made up of the set of juveniles who were charged in a court case in the Juvenile Court of Almeria (Spain). The period of study of recidivism was two years from the baseline. The object of study is presented, through the implementation of a decision tree. Two profiles of risk and protective factors are found. Risk factors associated with higher rates of recidivism are antisocial peers, age at baseline S-ASB, problems in school and criminality in family members.