(PS9-23) Feasibility of Mental Health Services for Justice-involved Youth: A Qualitative Examination of Juvenile Probation Laws and Stakeholder Perceptions

Mental health disorders are highly prevalent among youth being processed through the juvenile justice system. Despite the high need for mental health services, many juvenile justice facilities lack the resources and infrastructure to provide high-quality care to these youth. Providers practicing in these settings are tasked with managing large caseloads and often are not highly trained in specialized mental health care provision. Moreover, justice-involved youth are frequently transferred between facilities, making them poor candidates for most evidence-based interventions which are often lengthy. It seems sensible that more work be done to understand the feasibility of psychosocial interventions provided to this population and to situate the findings from research within the legal context of juvenile justice. To that end, the present study will include a review of state laws on juvenile probation for all 50 states in the United States. Data on statutes that dictate juvenile probation policy will be obtained from a report published by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL; Hartman, 2020) that summarizes information such as probation terms, processes, purpose, and length. We will summarize and present information on juvenile probation state laws relevant to the feasibility of mental health service provision for youth during their involvement with the juvenile justice system, including: (1) terms of juvenile probation; (2) average length of informal probation/supervision; (3) average length of formal probation/supervision; and (4) existence of guidelines on youth with mental or behavioral health problems. The present study will also include interview data gathered from a sample of juvenile justice stakeholders. Semi-structured interviews will be conducted with 15 juvenile probation officers and 15 caregivers of justice-involved youth about their perceptions on mental health services for justice-involved youth. Interviews will be audio-recorded and transcribed. Rapid Qualitative Analysis (RQA) will be performed on the interview transcripts. Guided by the domains in the interview script, a summary template will be created. After iterative revisions, the template will be used to generate a summary for each interview transcript. The transcript summaries from the coders will be consolidated into a matrix. The data in the summaries will be iteratively reviewed, discussed, and sorted to identify specific themes and sub-themes highlighted by each provider interview. The identified themes as well as the number/percentage of providers who endorsed them will be reported.