Parents’ Perspectives on Family‐centered Care in Juvenile Justice Institutions

• Author: Lieke Domburgh,René Breuk,Inge Simons,Wander Vaart,Henk Rigter,Eva Mulder,Robert Vermeiren
• Date: 01 September 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jfcj.12115
• Published date: 01 September 2018

Parents’ Perspectives on Family-centered Care in

Juvenile Justice Institutions

By Inge Simons, Wander van der Vaart, Eva Mulder, Henk Rigter, Rene Breuk,

Lieke van Domburgh, and Robert Vermeiren

Inge Simons, Msc., is a licensed psychologist who is currently finishing her Ph.D. within the Aca-

demic Workplace Youth at Risk. Her Ph.D. research focused on Family-centered Care in Juvenile Justice

Institutes. For the past two years, she combined her clinical work with her position as postdoc researcher at

Intermetzo-Pluryn on a project of family-centered care in secure residential care facilities. Email: i.si-

mons@curium.nl

Wander van der Vaart, Ph.D., is associate professor social research methodology at the University

of Humanistic Studies, Utrecht (NL). He has a background in quantitative and qualitative research methods,

political science and psychology. His main research interests are in social and cognitive aspects of survey

methodology, focusing on: a) retrospective data collection methods and b) tailor-made procedures for hard-

to-study populations. Email: W.v.derVaart@UvH.nl

Eva Mulder, Ph.D., works as senior researcher at the department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

at Leiden University Medical Center. She also works as Intermetzo-Pluryn as program leader of the Aca-

demic Workplace Youth at Risk. Email: e.a.mulder@curium.nl

Henk Rigter, Ph.D., (1946) was director of the Health Council of the Netherlands, a scientific body

advising the Netherlands government on health policy issues, associated professor at the Department of Pub-

lic Health, Erasmus University Medical School in Rotterdam, and director of the Netherlands Institute of

Mental Health and Addiction (Trimbos Institute). His research interests include youth care, public health,

and quality of care. Email: rigter.h@kpnmail.nl

Rene Breuk, Ph.D., is a child and adolescent psychiatrist who specialized in forensic adolescent psy-

chiatry. He has been engaged in working with and research of families both in day treatment for juvenile

delinquents as introducing family-centered care in juvenile detention centers. Email: rbreuk@intermetzo.nl

Lieke van Domburgh, Ph.D., is director Quality of Care and Innovation at Pluryn-Intermetzo, an

organization that provides different sorts of care to youth and adults, including forensic care. She is also

senior researcher at the department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry of the VU medical center. Email:

ldomburgh@pluryn.nl

Prof. dr. Robert Vermeiren, is professor of child and adolescent psychiatry and medical director at

Curium-LUMC, Leiden University medical center, head of research at Lucertis-De Jutters (Parnassia Group,

The Hague), and professor of forensic child and adolescent psychiatry at VU University medical center. He

is further member of the child and adolescent psychiatry section of the Dutch Association of Psychiatry. His

main topics relate to developmental psychopathology of behavior disorders in youths. Email: R.R.J.M.Ver-

meiren@curium.nl

Juvenile and Family Court Journal 69, No. 3

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and

reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

©2018 The Authors. Juvenile and Family Court Journal published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of National Councilof Juvenile and

Family Court Judges

39

ABSTRACT

Family-centered care during adolescent detention aims to increase parental par-

ticipation in an attempt to optimize treatment outcomes. However, little is known

about parents’ needs in family-centered care. To fill this gap, we interviewed 19 pur-

posefully selected parents of detained adolescents using a semi-structured topic list.

Although needs differed between parents, they were generally interested in activities

that included spending time with their child. It is important for parents to receive

timely information about their child’s condition and treatment, detention proce-

dures, and activities in the facility. The outcomes demonstrated that parents

expected a two-way communication based on respect and reliability.

Key words: family-centered care, youth detention center, delinquent adolesc ent, parental

participation.

INTRODUCTION

There are various reasons why involving parents in activities in youth detention

centers and in court procedures is beneficial. Most importantly, there is evidence that

parental participation contributes to positive outcomes for youths (Burke, Mulvey, Schu-

bert, & Garbin, 2014). More family contact was associated with a reduced risk of recidi-

vism for adjudicated delinquents in residential care (Ryan & Yang, 2005), and more

frequent visits of parents were related to depressive symptoms waning faster among

incarcerated youth, regardless of the quality of the parent-child relationship (Monahan,

Goldweber, & Cauffman, 2011). Second, when an adolescent is detained, this often

causes a crisis in the family. Alleviating this crisis may help the adolescent to better

endure detention and to better prepare for return to family and society (Church II, Mac-

Neil, Martin, & Nelson-Gardell, 2009). Finally, parents are a unique source of informa-

tion about their child’s needs, strengths, and experiences (Garfinkel, 2010). This

information could be helpful for staff in interacting with the adolescent.

As the literature suggests that youth-centered care for the treatment of troubled

youths should be supplemented with family-centered care (de Boer, Cameron, & Frensch,

2007; Frensch & Cameron, 2002; Knecht & Hargrave, 2002), youth detention centers in

the Netherlands, called Juvenile Justice Institutions (JJIs), decided to adopt a family-

centered approach (Sectordirectie Justiti€ele Jeugdinrichtingen, 2011). To translate this

approach into practice, the Academic Workplace Forensic Care for Youth (in Dutch:

AWFZJ, www.awrj.nl) developed a program of Family-centered Care (FC). This FC pro-

gram distinguishes four categories of parental participation (a) informing parents, (b) par-

ents meeting their child, (c) parents meeting staff, and (d) parents taking part in the

treatment program (Mos, Breuk, Simons, & Rigter, 2014; Simons, Mulder, et al., 2017).

However, family-centered care is hard to achieve in secure residential settings like JJIs

(Geurts, Boddy, Noom, & Knorth, 2012; Hendriksen-Favier, Place, & Van Wezep, 2010;

Sectordirectie Justiti€ele Jeugdinrichtingen, 2011). This was confirmed in a pilot stage of

our study, in which FC was implemented in two so-called living groups in different JJIs

40 | JUVENILE AND FAMILY COURT JOURNAL