Opportunity-Based Probation (OBP) is a new juvenile probation model that expands on adolescent development research by leveraging adolescents’ drive towards independence as well as their heightened receptivity to rewards. In collaboration with their probation officers, youth create meaningful goals and incentives that reward the development of prosocial behavior. Probation officers scaffold prosocial behavior by reinforcing success and constructively addressing probation violations and problem behaviors. OBP was originally developed through a collaboration between UW CoLab and juvenile court leadership in Pierce County, Washington with funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and is now being implemented, refined, and tested for acceptability, implementation, and preliminary effectiveness. In 2021, a second OBP site was started in Hartford County, Connecticut and is currently undergoing co-design and implementation efforts with an eye for eventual testing and expansion statewide.
This project involved an anonymous needs assessment for 6th through 12th graders in Washington to collect data on what students thought was going well, what challenges they had encountered, and what their needs were as schools replied to largely in-person instruction following a largely virtually year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Center for Mental Health, Policy, and the Law (CMHPL), through an operations grant, is developing programming in Workforce Innovation and Leadership in Forensic Mental Health to address the forensic mental health workforce shortage.
The CMHPL anticipates the programming will have a direct impact on recruitment and retention of mental health professionals who work in forensic settings, as well as other public sector and psychiatric leadership roles. Through development of high-quality training, mentorship, consultation, and leadership development programming, the CMHPL is growing the number of clinicians with knowledge and aptitude to work with persons involved in the criminal justice system. In turn, this will engender high-quality patient services to improve access and care delivery to persons involved with the justice system and reduce the risk of prolonged or repeated cycles through the system.
This project will develop and test an interactive web-based intervention with text-message reminders for young adults who drink to cope with negative affect. The intervention will include interactive modules on CBT coping skills, assignments to practice the skills, text-message reminders, and weekly assessments on coping skill utilization and barriers to use. A total of 120 young adults will be randomized to the 4-week, web-based drinking to cope intervention (n=60) or an assessment only control (n=60) and complete a 1- and 3-month follow-up.
Rates of suicide and mental health challenges among youth have never been higher. An essential part of youth well-being, mental health and suicide prevention is that parents and other caregivers of youth are prepared to support their children in these challenging times. Asking IS Caring is a parent-caregiver network started in Eastern Washington to provide community education, peer to peer support to families struggling with youth suicide behavior/ death, and input to districts implementing mental health programming and supports. This grant will help put into place essential infrastructure to further develop and to sustain the parent-caregiver network as well as to evaluate programming stemming from the network’s activities. Asking Is Caring is supported by a curriculum designed to offer parents-caregivers an invitation to be present with their child. It offers opportunities for participants to problem solve, and questions they can ask of their child, the parent’s friends, and of themselves. Asking IS Caring provides practical steps to build protection from suicide in the home.
Approximately 35% of youth who identified as transgender report having attempted suicide in the past 12 months. Despite this high risk, few preventive interventions have been developed specifically to address the unique needs of this group who experience high rates of marginalization, victimization and social isolation based on their gender identities. This study will use human centered design principles to adapt the Caring Contacts intervention for suicide prevention for transgender and gender expansive (TGE) youth and user test this intervention with suicidal ideation who are identified via a Zero Suicide-based screening program in the Seattle Children’s Gender Clinic.
