Last week, Partners Behavioral Health Management held the Juvenile Justice Partnerships / County Collaborative Forum in Statesville, North Carolina. The focus of the forum was “Effectively Engaging High Risk Youth in Communities: Identifying Adolescent Substance Use Trends and Using Data to Strengthen Community Collaboration.”
Eric Rowles, President and CEO of Leading to Change, led an interactive training in which he provided participants with tools and strategies to implement to connect with and engage youth. He discussed how the number one factor among those involved in the Juvenile Justice system is the lack of presence of a consistent and caring adult. “Every young person needs at least one person who is irrationally committed to their well-being,” Rowles said. His observation of the need of a consistent and caring adult mirrors what research on resilience claims regarding the role of attachment with a caregiver.
Rowles is a self-proclaimed poster child for challenging young people and spent time in jail when he was younger. He credits his success to a coach of his who never gave up on him and told him, “I think you can be better than who you are right now.” Rowles created Leading to Change, a nationally awarded training agency designed to transform the professional development arena, to pay it forward. His passion is teaching others transformational tools and youth engagement strategies to use with resistant kids.
Following Rowles’ discussion, participants at the forum learned about substance use trends in North Carolina from Dr. Stephen Sills, Director of the Center for Housing and Community Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and Rachel Ryding, Research Associate at the Center for Drug and Health Studies at the University of Delaware.
They spoke extensively about how various factors have impacted rates of substance use in Clay County and provided information on each of the nine counties served by Partners Behavioral Health Management: Burke, Catawba, Cleveland, Gaston, Iredell, Lincoln, Rutherford, Surry, and Yadkin.
They highlighted the importance of considering Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), social determinants of health, and behavioral health disparities when interpreting data within cultural, social, political, and economic contexts. It is vital for us to understand the history and variables, and how they relate to outcomes. They challenged the participants to think like social scientists as they interpret data in their own fields.
“You must zoom out, step back, and study all variables,” --Dr. Sills
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