Just Released, Trauma in Dual Status Youth: Putting Things In Perspective

The Robert F. Kennedy National Resource Center for Juvenile Justice is pleased to announce the release of Trauma in Dual Status Youth: Putting Things In Perspective, authored by Thomas Grisso, PhD and Gina Vincent, PhD of the University of Massachusetts Medical School. This article is the first in a series on trauma-related procedures for use with dual status youth—children and adolescents who come into contact with both child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Traumatic experiences can have significant impact on the mental health, physical health, and behavior of children and youth whom practitioners work to protect, treat, and rehabilitate.  This article describes generally the state of our understanding of the prevalence of trauma-based behavior problems and considerations in designing agreed-upon best practices to identify them. It explores the importance of clearly defining one’s objectives for identifying trauma in youth, discusses the broad types of screening and assessments available for use in identification, and highlights important issues of implementation.