Community-Based Services
Youth Inc.
Youth, Inc. is a local shelter care facility that accommodates up to 30 youth per day in three houses; one of which serves females. Youth are referred there from the Youth Center (Detention) when it is appropriate to use a less restrictive environment that can provide short term treatment and shelter care pending a longer-term placement or a return home.
Alternatives
Alternatives is a 90-day residential drug and alcohol treatment program for youth aged 13-18. It is a division of the Talbert House. The Juvenile Court contracts for 5 beds per month or approximately 26 youth per year. Program youth are subsidized by funding sources above and beyond the Court’s contracted amount. Youth who enter the program are admitting to a substance abuse problem and are willing to enter treatment. The program works with the families of the youth and provides step-down services in the form of intensive outpatient treatment and aftercare.
Hillcrest Training School operates 142 correctional/treatment beds for adjudicated delinquent youth placed by the Court. The program primarily serves youth adjudicated of felony offenses and offers a wide range of services, which include an on grounds school, substance abuse and sex offender programming and psychological services to name a few. Hillcrest Training school also provides a short-term diagnostic assessment program for male offenders referred by the probation department. Through the collaboration of Probation, Hillcrest and several other Court departments, the Court opened a female MAP (Multi-Dimensional Assessment Program) unit at the Hillcrest facility in 2004.
Passages, a division of Talbert House, is a residential treatment program for felony and chronic misdemeanant female offenders. Using a gender-sensitive approach, the Passages program utilizes techniques to address issues of personal/family relationships, accountability, victimization and substance abuse. The program has two components; a 90-day program for chronic status and misdemeanant offenders, and a 180-day program for felony offenders. Passages also offers Intensive Outpatient and Aftercare services for residents. The Juvenile Court contracts for a minimum of 17 beds per month.
Community Placements
The Juvenile court periodically utilizes various residential placements in the local community to address the multiple needs of some of its client population. Usually these placements are shorter-term (four months or less) and satisfy a need that outpatient services cannot. In the past, placements such as group homes and residential facilities in the state were utilized.
Lighthouse Youth Services provides a family outreach component for juveniles on probation who could benefit from a time-limited, structured in-home therapy approach. Workers are on call 24 hours a day during the program and work with the entire family system to help strengthen the family unit.
NORCEN Sexual Offender Group
NORCEN Behavioral Health Systems, Inc. contracts with the Court to provide an ongoing Sexual offenders’ group for youth adjudicated on sexual offenses who are able to be maintained in the community but who need intensive treatment for their behavior. The group can accommodate approximately 7-8 youth at any given time, due to the lengthy nature of the treatment and the slow turnover that occurs. The court contracts separately with NORCEN and with therapist Randy Frost to provide some individual (and some group) work with several offenders whose level of functioning or youthful age precludes their participation in the NORCEN group.
Occasionally the Court contracts on a case-by-case basis with various local providers for various outpatient treatment services for probation youth. Some examples of this would include individual sexual offenders treatment, group substance abuse treatment, mentoring, violence prevention program participation, theft prevention program participation, in-home therapy, and the like.
Hamilton Choices (Formerly Creative Connections)
This managed care concept wrap around program has been in existence since 1995 under several different vendors over the years. In November 2002, it came under the auspices of Hamilton Choices. The overall mission and purpose, as well as service operations, are as follows: to purchase, evaluate, and monitor a wide variety of services directed to the County’s most difficult to serve multi-system children and their families. Youth receive a wide array of services ranging from community-based to residential, and remain in the program for a significant period of time (average 18 months to 2 years) based on their issues and needs.
The Bridge
After many years of discussions between the Juvenile Justice and Mental Health Systems on service programming for youth who cross both systems, a demonstration project was funded for three sites in Ohio. In Southwest Ohio four counties, including Butler, Clermont, Hamilton and Warren, collaborated and were awarded funding that lead to the Program now known as "The Bridge". Talbert House, the lead provider organization, opened the residential site in October 2000. This secure facility combines a strong behavioral management milieu, cognitive-behavioral groups and interventions with sophisticated child and adolescent psychiatric expertise to address the needs of this population, characterized by severe mental issues as well a history of aggressive behavior. The initial site had a capacity of 8 beds. A larger facility with a 15-bed capacity opened in the spring 2001. The Probation Department contracts for 6 beds on a daily basis. The Bridge has not received referrals from other counties in several years, but does receive referrals from other agencies at this time.
Copyright 2007 Hamilton County Juvenile Court. All rights reserved.