Psycho-social

Intervention
 Psychosocial Intervention
a. Skills necessary for psychosocial interventions
b. Assessments : Interview and tests
c. Psychosocial intervention (care, support and
counseling)
 Cognitive Behavior Therapy
 Life skill development
 Re-socialization
 Counseling
 a. Skills necessary for psychosocial intervention

Modern justice system focuses on psychological and social

aspects of effects on victims of delinquency.
Modern justice system is victim focused because the main
sufferer is the victim
The victim needs immediate psychological and social support
before other support
For most victims it is necessary to diminish their feelings of
revenge, suicidal tendency, and serious emotional
disturbances.
Therefore victims need immediate :-
 Emotional support and trauma counseling
 Treatment of bodily and psychological harm
 Legal support to protect their rights and recovery of loss
 Financial support
 Counseling, psychotherapy or social supports to get rid from
stress, traumatic feelings, sadness, fear, and mental
deviations.
 Institutional care to victims, if necessary.
 Reintegration in the community.
However, the present juvenile justice system does not provide such
support to victim children. Therefore, the system should extend such
psychosocial support to victim children and should be limited to
delinquents. Children in conflict with the law need supports like;

Keeping in contact with guardian to make them free from fear and
stress.
Managing separate detention center from adults.
Helping them to fulfill basic survival and development needs.
Managing a legal guardian.
Protecting them from punishment, neglect and rejection.
Helping them to treat mental disorders, if any.
Helping them to involve in counseling, psychotherapy,
community service, and behavior modification services.   
Helping them to find separate appropriate settings for first
offenders, minor offenders and severe offenders.
Coordination to ensure family, community or government
supervision to prevent further delinquency.
Helping to maintain social respect of offender’s family through
community intervention.
Helping them to find separate settings for girls to decrease risk
to be abused.
 a. Assessments : Interview and tests
 Assessment is measurement or judgment of something
 Psychological assessment is measurement of psychological
qualities of people
 Psychological assessment is a procedure the seeks to understand
the psychology of individual, whatever the circumstances, whether
in clinic, educational, forensic, counseling or occupational settings
 Psychological assessment comprises a variety of procedures to
understand individual and designing treatment plan
 Psychological assessment of child offender/victim is important to
understand both roots of deviant behaviors and plan possible
rehabilitation strategy
 Withthe help of assessment, likelihood of future offenses can be
forecasted and can be prevented if there is any chance of it.
 Assessment may occur soon after first contact in response to
screening information, in which case it may be aimed at
determining whether an emergency situation truly exists, what the
specific nature of the emergency is in this particular youth’s case,
and how best to deal with it
 Theassessment process involves the collection, processing, and
synthesis of information about the individual. They may or may not
be performed by mental health professionals (child specialized
psychiatrists, psychologists, or psychiatric social workers),
depending on their nature and scope, but they all require
considerable training and expertise
 Assessments are focused on assessing risk/protective factors, and
mental health needs of juvenile delinquents
 Toreduce this complexity, minimize ambiguity and ensure juvenile
delinquents’ rights, mental health professionals (basically
psychologists) are assigned in juvenile justice system
Some of the relevant general assessment measures  are discussed here:
1. Interview
 There is a dependence on interviews in the collection of information
about clients in juvenile justice system
 It is the only method used for assessment of juvenile delinquents in
Nepalese Juvenile court
 For the most part the dependence is on unstructured or semi
structured clinical interviews
 Which may include mental status examination (MSE) and case
history along with interviews with significant others
 The interview includes a “mental status examination” which
considers the youth’s behavior during the evaluation, mood,
speech, the presence of delusions, hallucinations, obsessions or
suicidal thoughts, and insight.
 In addition evaluators should interview the youth’s parents (or
other family members/legal guardians), and other individuals
who are familiar with the youth such as teachers, employers,
coaches, therapists, case workers
 b) Psychological tests
 Psychological tests assess abilities, skills, or traits that are
measureable
 Those attributes that are measureable are called “constructs” which
may not be always relevant, or may be indirectly related to, the
questions at issue in court
 Manyof the tests use in juvenile justice system do not directly
answer the relevant legal questions.
 Psychological tests vary in their types and purposes, but they can
be described as standardized ways of assessing various aspects or
abilities of a person.
 For example there are standardized tests for assessment of mood,
intelligence, aptitude, achievement, quality of thought process,
adaptive behaviors, memory etc which if administered and
analyzed properly prepares a basis for comparing a person with
other person(s).
i) Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children- Third edition
(WISC-III): (for verbal and performance -6 to 16)
ii) Assessment of academic functioning (reading, spelling,
vocabulary, airthmatic and writing)
iii) Academic functioning can be measured through individually
administered tests.
c) Personality tests:
Objective test :- Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Adolescent (MMPI-A)
Projective test :-
 i) Children’s Apperception Test (A storytelling Technique) for age 3 to 10
ii) Family Drawing Test (A Projective Drawing Technique)
Iii) Rorschach Inkblot Test:
iv) Emotional functioning test : Tests designed to provide an index of a youth’s
emotional functioning are also included in juvenile justice system. The most
commonly used measure of emotional function is BDI
 c. Psychosocial Intervention
        Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT)
 A cognitive approach emphasizes the role of thinking in the
etiology and maintenance of problems
 CBT seeks to modify or change patterns of thinking that are
believed to contribute to a client’s problems
 Itis based on the theory that thoughts, beliefs and attitudes
determine emotion, motivation and behavior
 The way we perceive or evaluate a situation influences our feeling
and behavioral responses
Components of CBT:
1. Cognitive reframing
2. Relaxation training :- muscle relaxation, yoga
3. Modeling
4. Reinforced practice :- child is rewarded for practicing to confront
a feared situation or objects
5. Communication skill training
6. Problem solving training
7. Social skill training
Life skills development
 Life skills are the skills of needed competencies for human
development and to adopt positive behaviors that enable a person
to deal effectively with the challenges of everyday life

 All of the status and violence offenders as well as victim need such
trainings
Common life skills are:
 Interpersonal skills including communication, negotiation, refusal
skills, assertiveness, cooperation, and empathy.

 Cognitiveskills including decision making, critical thinking,

problem solving, understanding consequences and self evaluation
 Emotional
coping skills including stress management, self
management, self monitoring, and increasing an internal locus of
control.

 Socialskills training: it focuses on verbal and nonverbal

behaviors; like maintaining eye contact, smiling at appropriate
times, matching tone of voice to content, accurately perceiving the
emotions of others, interpreting nonverbal behaviors, making
requests, standing up for the rights, maintaining a conversation
appropriately.
 Counseling
 Counseling is a therapeutic model to change thinking and behavior
of the victims or delinquents
 Counseling is a planned interaction between the client / counselee
and counselor to assist the client in altering, improving or resolving
his/her present behavior, difficulty, or discomfort
 Itis a method through which practical solutions are reached to an
identified problem.
 Counseling is different than suggestion, advice, guidance and
psychotherapy
 Basic Elements of Counseling
Trust :-
Trust of client on counselor is one of the important factors
determining success of counseling

Counselor needs to develop feeling in client that counselor is person

that can be trusted fully.

Sense of trust can be developed by becoming genuine in behavior and

congruent in responding with client
Confidentiality :-

Confidentiality is maintaining privacy of clients. Assure client that

everything will be kept in secrete.

Client do trust in counselors only if they believe that their

conversation will be kept secret.

Counselor should thus always respect privacy of their client and do

not interact about particular client except in professional interaction
Unconditional positive regard :-

Positive regard is the need for love and affection from other people.

Conditional positive regard is situation where people get positive

regard only when they fulfill certain condition

It is complete acceptance to the other person. Counselor accepts the

client with non judgmental attitude or preoccupied mind
Non-judgmental attitude :-

Counselor should not judge individual in terms of sex, religion or

any sort of behaviors client displyas.

Counselor should accept child without making judgment.

Counselors are thus not supposed to impose any decision or

solution to their clients
Empathic understanding :-

Empathy is sensing others emotion from their point of view, that is

ability to feel others emotion

Empathic understanding can be done through reflection of feeling

during counseling session with client
 Resocialization
Most children placed out of home will one day re-enter the community.
The victims placed at rehabilitation center also return to their home after
certain duration.

Thus, the juvenile justice system must address two important issues:
prevention from recurrence of offending behavior and community
acceptance to child.

Reintegration refers to working with offender by providing programs

that aim to reduce re-offending through the provisions of certain skills.
Aftercare means re-integrative service that prepares children for re-
entry into the community by establishing collaborative arrangements
with the community and ensuring delivery of prescribed services and
supervision
Aftercare requires:
• Preparing children for their return to community.
• Creation of social control network as well as variety of community
services to prevent re-occurrence of antisocial behavior.
• Intensive intervention during transition to the community.
• Helping to attain job skills and earn money.
• Ensuring the involvement of adults in therapeutic programs for
teens at community.
 iv) REPORT WRITING

Case management :-

 Case management simply means to manage particular case

 Casemanagement in juvenile justice starts with contact with

delinquents and finishes with termination of case
The fundamental activities of juvenile justice case management
include engaging the client in the treatment process, assessing the
client’s need, developing a service plan, linking the client with
appropriate services, monitoring client’s progress, and advocating for
the client as needed.
Process of case management

Intake :- Good rapport building and giving necessary information to

the delinquents

Assessment :- making clear picture about the delinquent by taking

interview, case history and if needed, other methods of assessment
like psychological test to measure intelligence and personality
Classification :- based on the assessment result, delinquents are
classified in various categories, and offenders may be assigned to
particular institutional settings or offered specialized service

Referral :- Based on the background information and categorization

some offenders may be referred to other institution. Some may be
referred to counselor while other may be referred to vocational
training institute
Intervention:-
Intervention start after classifying offenders. The case manager
matches available resources and service to the offender’s identified
needs and ensures participation.

Monitoring :-
Case manager (if given right) monitors offender’s behaviors and
checks whether or not there is some improvement. Monitoring will
be done till court wants case manager to monitor.
Evaluation :-
The case manager must determine if the client has received the
services and whether that client has benefited from those services or
not.

Advocacy :- Case manager can also advocate for the welfare for the
welfare of offender
Role and importance of Child correction center

When a court finds any child guilty, s/he has to stay at correction home

Children should involve in correctional activities for certain duration as

ordered by the court

The status offences do not enter court proceedings, but go to community

run correction homes or protection centers. For ex:, runaways’, and drug
abuse cases get counseling, psychotherapy and other reformative
services from clinic, hospital, community run correction centers
The correction home provides medical treatment, counseling,
psychotherapy and social skills trainings along with food and
shelter to children

After modification of their delinquent behavior, finally they go for

community reintegration.
Generally correction homes;
 Prevent delinquent children from being antisocial as they grow
adult.

 Provideshelter and address other survival needs. Apply correctional

programs to modify behavior and to protect their rights. Conduct
educational and vocational programs. Manage them to appear in
court.

 Prepareand submit the report of behavioral status of the child when

asked by the court. Help to control crime in the community.