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Making huge strides to help teen offenders

WHEN HE WAS only 15, Julian Nazario of Portland first felt the icy grip of methamphetamine use. Within a couple of years he was both dealing and using the drug. By the time he was 17, his life had spiraled out of control. He had dropped out of high school and was facing serious criminal charges from a juvenile justice system with little tolerance for serious drug-related offenses.

Nazario was lucky.

Thanks to an innovative Portland State-based program called Reclaiming Futures, and his own hard work, Nazario’s life is headed in a more positive direction these days. By April he had been clean and sober for more than five months; once his treatment program is successfully completed, criminal charges against him will be dismissed. Reconnected with his mother, Donna, and two older sisters, he’s now working and has completed his GED. This fall, he plans to attend Western Oregon University in Monmouth. He now has a dream: to be a high school teacher.

“Reclaiming Futures has given me the tools, the people, and the resources I need to help me solve problems,” says Nazario, now 18. “Sometimes I just need somebody to talk to. It’s a very, very helpful program. As long as you’re willing to change, it works.”

Nationwide, nearly 2 million teens are arrested each year and two-thirds of them test positive for drugs and alcohol. But the vast majority will receive no treatment for their substance abuse. Although drug-related juvenile incarcerations nearly tripled in a recent 10-year period, one estimate suggests that fewer than 10 percent of these teens will receive substance abuse treatment.

The statistics are staggering. According to one study, every time a youth leaves high school and takes up a life of crime, violence, and substance abuse, the lifetime cost to society can reach $2.3 million. It costs $40,000 to keep a juvenile drug offender in jail for a year. Yet effective outpatient treatment of a drug and alcohol problem costs only about $3,000, and can, in many cases, reverse the entire course of a life headed in the wrong direction.

NAZARIO’S MOTHER, Donna, becomes highly emotional when discussing Reclaiming Futures. “It has helped us learn to communicate and build a relationship as a family,” she says. “Sharing thoughts and emotions with each other was hard to do. It’s been an amazing experience for the whole family.

“One day we were in a counseling session, a pretty emotional session, and suddenly a calmness came over us. All of the anger just disappeared, and suddenly we could hear one another’s voice. We just started laughing. Today my family gets along without all the chaos. The Reclaiming Futures program has been absolutely huge for us.”

RECLAIMING FUTURES got its start in 2002 as a five-year, $21 million initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the largest philanthropic organization focused on improving health and health care in the U.S. Its goal: to create a new approach to helping teens caught up in the seemingly inescapable vortex of drugs, alcohol, and crime through effective screening and treatment, system reform, and community involvement.

Reclaiming Futures is housed in Portland State’s School of Social Work. Initially, 10 communities around the country, including Multnomah County, were chosen to pilot its concept. So pleased were the foundation trustees with the results of the program that in February, they announced a multiyear, $6 million expansion that will open up the program to new communities.

What makes Reclaiming Futures unique is its focus on the underlying reasons teens run a foul of the law. These factors include not only drug and alcohol abuse, but also extend to abusive and neglectful family backgrounds and clinical psychological disorders. According to the National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice, up to 80 percent of juvenile offenders have diagnosable mental health disorders.

“Traditionally, when juveniles enter the justice system, it hasn’t done a good job of addressing the fundamental problems that got them there in the first place,” says Reclaiming Futures National Director Laura Nissen, a PSU associate professor of social work. “We work with the courts to get the kids out of the system and into rehab so they can begin to turn their lives around.”

This is not to say that the founders and administrators of Reclaiming Futures believe that teens convicted of crimes should not experience the consequences of their actions.

“Kids need to be held accountable when they break the law,” Nissen says flatly. But clearly, if drug-related incarceration of juvenile offenders increases 291 percent in 10 years, punishment and incarceration alone aren’t solving the problem.

Reclaiming Futures proposes—and has successfully put into practice—a different paradigm. It combines system reforms, treatment improvement, and community engagement. Judges, probation officers, treatment providers, families, and community members work together to make the changes needed to help teens. Special emphasis is placed on assisting youth with substance abuse and other mental health problems.

Three of the most important changes the communities adopt are: conducting in-depth assessments called GAIN—short for Global Appraisal of Individual Needs; developing detailed collaborative treatment plans with input from Reclaiming Futures staff, probation officers, and families; and making an immediate referral to treatment professionals from a provider fully versed in the Reclaiming Futures philosophy and approach.

TREATMENT AND SOBRIETY are important components of the program’s success—but only part. Profound and lasting change also requires a positive example. To provide that, the program also matches its clients with a mentor: a community resident who builds a personal relationship with each troubled teen, then provides guidance, encouragement and, sometimes, just a listening ear.

“A single caring adult can change a child’s life,” says Mac Prichard, Reclaiming Futures’ communications director. “We ask people to contribute their time and their experience. It can make all the difference to these kids.”

Tiffiney Hendon, a Reclaiming Futures graduate, succinctly sums up the benefits of the program on its www.whenyouwere15.org Web site.

“I had to change my whole life and deal with very hard personal issues every day,” writes Hendon. “Who helps you through that? It surely wasn’t the friends I’d used [drugs] with. It was caring adults.”

ON THE WEB site, whenyouwere15.org, young people and their mentors share stories of what life was like when they were teens—and what life is like now. The site also offers invaluable direction to adults interested in mentoring teens.

Abbey Stamp-O’Connor MSW ’02, Hendon’s staff mentor and a mental health consultant for the Multnomah County Department of Community Justice, is equally enthusiastic about Reclaiming Futures. “Multnomah County had no juvenile drug court or other diversion program which offered dismissal of drug possession charges once substance abuse treatment was completed,” she says. “Reclaiming Futures has drastically increased communication among youth treatment providers and juvenile court, which has put treatment and rehabilitation options on a whole different plane. Now these kids can choose an appropriate program that can have a lasting effect on their lives.”

Recently, Multnomah County Community Justice staff went to Salem to seek support for the program from the Oregon Legislature. They asked some of their graduates to come along. One was Nazario, who stood before the Legislature and told his story—living proof that the program works.

“That was huge for him,” says his mother, Donna. “He really wanted to help them get funding. He knows the program works.”

“It’s so rare, in one’s professional life, to see a problem and to participate in developing a creative solution that really works,” says Nissen, Reclaiming Futures’ national director. “We’ve seen the benefits right away.”

Jeff Kuechle, a Portland freelance writer, wrote the articles "We Mean Business" and "Cracking the Code" in the winter 2007 Portland State Magazine.