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Intervention Targeting the Multiple Causes of Delinquency


Because family issues combine with a range of other factors in predicting delinquency, comprehensive delinquency intervention should target multiple systems and facilitate family involvement in other domains of adolescents' lives, such as in school and with peers. Research consistently reveals a negative association between antisocial behavior and academic performance. [142] Interventions to remedy academic skill deficits may be school based, but the family can also play an important role in early school adjustment. Parents' involvement in school and monitoring of school performance lessens the likelihood of school failure and associated negative outcomes, such as dropping out and delinquency. [143] Research suggest that antisocial youths' lack of academic engagement both in the classroom (e.g., time on task) and at home (e.g., time spent on homework) contributes to poor academic performance. [144] Therefore, one area of intervention involves helping parents to provide an environment for doing homework, including setting rules about when homework gets done and monitoring homework completion. Discussing school with children enables parents to track what and how the child is doing in school and to communicate their investment.
Parent-school involvement encompasses a range of activities at school and at home that foster academic competence. Unfortunately, recent research on factors that affect parent-school involvement finds that some of the same disadvantages related to parent training failures undermine parent-school involvement. [145] School social workers may be in the best position to foster parent-school involvement for these high-risk families by working with groups of parents to identify barriers to involvement, empowering parents to work together to support their children's schooling, and facilitating links between parents and schools that address and remedy obstacles to collaboration. [146]
 Because the antisocial child's intrapersonal and social skills deficits play into peer rejection, interventions that focus on the individual characteristics of aggressive youth are examined next. Among the most promising are cognitive-behavioral interventions that target attributional styles and problem-solving skills in an attempt to improve positive social coping in peer interactions. [147] These interventions, usually conducted in small groups in school- or institution-based settings, have been shown to decrease aggressive behavior and increase social functioning, but there is less evidence for maintaining change or generalizing outside of the training settings. For adjudicated delinquents, cognitive-behavioral treatments generally show skill improvements, but the studies either do not examine or only demonstrate minimal effects on recidivism. [148] Interventions that place aggressive and delinquent youth together in small groups are also not without risks given the prominence of deviant peers in explaining risk for delinquency. [149] Evaluation of peer coping skills training that combined minimally and highly aggressive youth in small groups so that competent children could function as role models showed no adverse effects and some positive ones for the competent children. Because the intervention also decreased aggressive behavior and increased positive coping for the high-risk youth, this may represent a promising strategy for group interventions with aggressive youth. [150]
Combining skills training for youth with family interventions may produce more durable and generalizable change, as a few studies now suggest. Alan Kazdin and colleagues found that combining cognitive problem-solving skills training with parent management training had a more marked effect on child antisocial behavior and delinquency, as well as on parental stress and depression, than either intervention alone. [151] Similarly, Arnold Goldstein and associates found less delinquency recidivism when families were involved in his skills-building aggression replacement training when youths alone received the group training. [152] Psychostimulant medication can enhance the effects of both adolescent skills training and family management for many youth who have attention-deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) and induced positive short -term changes in behavioral, academic, and social functioning of treated children, but most researchers in this area agree that combining medication with other interventions is necessary given the myriad problems associated with ADHD and the lack of evidence for enduring effects of psychostimulant medication. [153]
Finally, families are important in the control of the peer environment, contributing both indirect and direct effects. [154] For example, although association with delinquent peers is linked to delinquency, this relationship is weaker under conditions of greater family support than it is with low support. [155] As another example, Mark Warr found that attachment to parents prevented association with delinquent peers and, moreover, if adolescents developed friendships with delinquent peers, the amount of time spent with parents, especially weekend time, could counter peer influence and mitigate against delinquency. [156]
Longitudinal data now show that poor monitoring increases drift into a deviant peer group, particularly in adolescence when an increasing amount of unsupervised time is spent with peers. [157] Families can therefore influence the peer environment through monitoring and supervision. [158] Involvement in networks with other parents may increase the ability of parents to monitor adolescents effectively, although this has not been empirically evaluated to our knowledge. Unfortunately, there is very little intervention research on the intersection between parenting and peer networks. This issue is an important arena for developing intervention principles and strategies.
The research literature, especially findings from recent causal modeling studies, clearly supports the importance of multidimensional approaches to intervention with delinquents and their families. Nevertheless, few programs actually incorporate these approaches. In a notable exception, Henggeler and his colleagues have developed multisystemic family therapy (MST) that addresses the context of family life and targets the multiple domains relevant to the adolescent's dysfunction, intrapersonal and systemic (family, peer, school, and neighborhood). [159] Services are delivered in the youth's natural environment, using a home-based family preservation model. The therapy attempts to provide parents with the skills and resources to develop and carry out strategies to promote behavior change across the other key systems linked with antisocial behavior. Treatment is time-linked, individualized for each family, and high flexible.
In a series of controlled group studies, multisystemic family therapy has shown consistent and strong results as an effective intervention for serious antisocial behavior and juvenile delinquency in both urban and rural areas and with families of different cultural backgrounds and socioeconomic status. [160] A recent study of the long-term effects of MST with serious multiple offenders illustrates its effect on the targeted correlates of antisocial behavior, as well as on the prevention of criminality and violence. [161] Treatment increased family members' perception of cohesion and adaptability, increased observed supportiveness, decreased conflict and hostility, and decreased parents' reports of youth problem behavior and of their own psychiatric problem. Most important, compared with youth who received individual treatment, MST youths at 4-year follow-up were significantly less likely to have been arrested or, if arrested, had committed significantly less serious offenses Although they did not independently evaluate this premise, the researchers hypothesized that the favorable results were largely due to the comprehensive nature of MST and its delivery in the natural settings of the adolescent and family.
Increasing recognition of the need to focus on the multiple determinants of antisocial behavior has also led to the development of several multicomponent prevention programs. An important example is the Seattle Social Development Project developed by Hawkins and associates. [162] The goal of this program-to strengthen bonds to family, school, and conventional peers as a deterrent to antisocial behavior-is addressed by developing skills to increase successful participation in each of these arenas. The program provides opportunities, skills, and reinforcement in structured components including classroom interventions and parent training. Initial comparisons of experimental and control groups suggest that the program has the greatest effect on school adjustment and skills, although some reduction in early delinquency and drug use has been demonstrated. The program illustrates the promise and complexity of coordinated programming directed at multiple targets. [163]



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