Dakota County Community Corrections Whole Family Approach at the New Chance Day Treatment Program

About the Program

Category: Criminal Justice and Public Safety (Best in Category)

Year: 2018

There has been a great deal of research and energy surrounding the effectiveness of out of home placements for justice involved youth. Placement in secure detention facilities often leads to increased recidivism. Relying on incarceration as a means of supervising youth in the juvenile justice system does little to nothing to address the root causes of delinquency. Dakota County Community Corrections designed the New Chance Day Treatment Program as an effective supervision strategy in an effort to prevent and keep youth designated as high risk for future delinquency in their homes and community rather than in out of home placements and secure facilities. Unfortunately, the outcomes of youth participating in the New Chance Day Treatment Program have been mediocre and have not prevented out of home placement for Dakota County youth. Instead, we discovered youth in the program were returning to court for technical violations and placed in secure settings at a higher rate than those supervised by a high risk probation officer in the community. Traditional supervision approaches often create adversarial relationships between systems players, youth and their families, yet findings based on research suggest strategies that build relationships and work collaboratively with a client’s family result in reduced risk for future delinquency. Prior to the implementation of a whole family approach, staff at New Chance Day Treatment typically communicated with parents on a monthly basis to educate and inform, rarely to collaborate. A fresh new approach was needed to improve outcomes, reduce risk to reoffend, and prevent out of home placement for the youth placed on probation in Dakota County.