OJJDP FY 08 Brief Interventions and Referrals to Treatment (BIRT) for Juvenile Courts and Juvenile Drug Courts

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The U. S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (SAMHSA/CSAT) are collaborating to enhance the capacity of juvenile courts and juvenile drug courts to improve and increase the availability of Brief Interventions and Referrals to Treatment (BIRT) and to establish partnerships between juvenile courts and juvenile drug courts to ensure that substance abusing juvenile offenders receive effective and appropriate treatment. Motivational Enhancement Therapy/Cognitive Behavioral Therapy 5 sessions (MET/CBT) for adolescents is the protocol that applicants will be required to implement under BIRT. In an era when cost containments are important acknowledgements, collaborative efforts which improve the expansion of treatment availability to the juvenile court and the juvenile drug court systems are critical. BIRT provides a resource to juvenile court and juvenile drug court systems by providing access to a relatively short, non- intensive brief intervention therapeutic model which assists in identifying the most appropriate referrals and admissions criteria for youth involved in the juvenile justice system. Following a screening to be conducted by the juvenile courts that will identify all adolescents involved in the juvenile court system who use substances of abuse the objective of this resource is to provide a brief intervention protocol (MET/CBT) to those youth for whom this intervention is an appropriate response to their severity of substance use. Those adolescents who are identified to need more intensive treatment will be referred to appropriate adolescent treatment and juvenile drug court. The primary objective of identifying substance abusing youth is long term reductions in substance abuse-related morbidity and associated problems. A secondary objective of this effort will be significant savings regarding health care and juvenile court costs. This solicitation invites juvenile courts in collaboration with juvenile drug courts to implement BIRT and to define and identify the benefits of partnerships between juvenile courts and juvenile drug courts to ensure that substance abusing juvenile offenders receive effective and appropriate treatment.

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