Webinar: Adolescents Charged with Domestic Battery on a Parent: Assessment and Management

There has been a sharp increase in the number of youth referred to the juvenile justice system for charges related to stressful or chaotic home environments that result in adolescents being charged with domestic violence of a parent. These incidents rarely result in significant injury, yet the justice system’s response in some jurisdictions results in detention twice as often as other cases. The majority of these youth are not at risk for continued Adolescent Domestic Battery (ADB) or for other forms of reoffending, which implies that the preferred response for many would be treatment designed to meet needs of the youth and the family. To this end, with funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, researchers conducted a multi-site study to with the largest sample of adolescents charged with domestic battery on a parent to date to design and validate the Adolescent Domestic Battery Typologies Tool (ADBTT). This webinar will discuss a) the different categories of youth charged with ADB, b) how to assess them to make more informed justice and treatment-related decisions, and c) coordinated treatment approaches with the potential for success. Ideally, implementation of the ADBTT early in the juvenile justice process would lead to diverting the “right” youths away from formal justice processing with minimal intervention and would help derive the best treatment protocol within the system of care.