Webinar Promotes Healing for Youth in the Justice System

A new webi­nar explores how men­tal health and juve­nile jus­tice sys­tems serve youth who need help man­ag­ing their behav­ior with pro­grams rel­e­vant to their cul­tur­al backgrounds.

The 60-minute webi­nar, Mov­ing Men­tal Health Sys­tems from Per­pet­u­at­ing Dis­par­i­ties to Pro­mot­ing Cul­tur­al­ly Rel­e­vant Heal­ing, builds on the find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions in The Col­or of Jus­tice: The Land­scape of Trau­mat­ic Jus­tice for Youth of Col­or in Con­flict with the Law, a report issued in 2019 by an alliance of men­tal health orga­ni­za­tions: the Asso­ci­a­tion of Black Psy­chol­o­gists, the Nation­al Lat­inx Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion, the Soci­ety of Indi­an Psy­chol­o­gists, the Asian Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion and the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion. The Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion fund­ed the report.

Dur­ing the ses­sion, par­tic­i­pants will learn about:

• youth behav­ior viewed from a social eco­log­i­cal per­spec­tive, which con­sid­ers the trau­ma a young per­son, his fam­i­ly and his com­mu­ni­ty have expe­ri­enced and how racial dis­crim­i­na­tion against youth of col­or may be com­pound­ed by the inter­sec­tion of race with pover­ty, immi­grant or refugee sta­tus, gen­der and/​or sex­u­al orientation;
• prob­lems in the men­tal health field that affect Lati­no youth, includ­ing over­diag­no­sis of depres­sion and con­duct dis­or­der; under­diag­no­sis of trau­ma; dis­pro­por­tion­ate refer­rals to pun­ish­ment or crim­i­nal sanc­tions by men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als; and com­mu­ni­ca­tion fail­ures due to lan­guage bar­ri­ers; and
• the need for increased pre­ven­tion and inter­ven­tion for black youth; lack of screen­ing and assess­ment tools that have been val­i­dat­ed across racial and eth­nic groups; and wide racial and eth­nic dis­par­i­ties in con­fine­ment and school refer­rals to the jus­tice system.

The webi­nar includes exam­ples of efforts to pro­mote heal­ing rel­e­vant to par­tic­i­pants’ cul­ture, such as the Com­mu­ni­ty Heal­ing Ini­tia­tive in Mult­nom­ah Coun­ty, Ore­gon — home to Port­land — that employs a cul­tur­al­ly spe­cif­ic mod­el cen­tered on heal­ing indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive trau­ma, account­abil­i­ty, fam­i­ly trans­for­ma­tion, her­itage and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, self-esteem and self-deter­mi­na­tion, lead­er­ship, edu­ca­tion, safe­ty and collaboration.

The webi­nar features:

• Cheryl Grills, past pres­i­dent of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Black Psy­chol­o­gists and a prin­ci­pal author of The Col­or of Jus­tice,
• Yolan­da Evie Gar­cia, past pres­i­dent of the Nation­al Lat­inx Psy­cho­log­i­cal Association,
• Jen­nifer Kel­ly, pres­i­dent-elect of the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion, and
• Xime­na Ospina-Todd, direc­tor of the Com­mu­ni­ty Sta­bil­i­ty and Sup­port Ser­vices Divi­sion, Lati­no Network.

“We have to do this work because chil­dren are count­ing on us, chil­dren are hurt­ing and we have not done the best that we can do to serve them and to under­stand the cir­cum­stances that they’re deal­ing with,” Grills says dur­ing the webinar.

The Casey Foundation’s JDAI® train­ing part­ner, the Pre­tri­al Jus­tice Insti­tute, orga­nized the webi­nar. Par­tic­i­pants can view the webi­nar with­out join­ing JDAIcon­nect, the Foundation’s free online com­mu­ni­ty for JDAI prac­ti­tion­ers and peo­ple inter­est­ed in youth jus­tice. Users of JDAICon­nect will have the added ben­e­fit of access­ing online dis­cus­sions and addi­tion­al resources.