On November 21, 2024, as part of a day-long training on "Juvenile Capacity to Proceed" for juvenile court judges offered by the University of North Carolina's School of Government, Dr. Kruh presented a session on how forensic mental health evaluators conduct juvenile competency evaluations at a best practices level. This was part of a day-long session helping juvenile court judges to understand the nuances of North Carolina's new juvenile competency statute and the implementation of juvenile competency evaluation and remediation services. Dr. Kruh's session was offered as a simultaneous webinar for professionals at North Carolina's Division of Juvenile Justice throughout the state.

If you are interested in having Dr. Kruh, through National Youth Screening and Assessment Partners (NYSAP), provide a training to your group on the topic of juvenile competency to stand trial, or you are in need of a juvenile competency evaluation, please contact Dr. Kruh at [email protected].

​On November 7, 2024, Ivan Kruh and Shoshanna Must presented a webinar to the International Forensic Psychiatry Lecture Series, hosted by McMaster University and St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton, ON. This series is a weekly education opportunity addressing engaging and innovative topics in forensic psychiatry reaching psychiatrists and allied professionals worldwide. The topic of the webinar was, “Current Assessment Approaches for Problematic Sexual Behavior in Adolescents.” Dr. Kruh discussed the field’s evolution from traditional risk assessment of Youth with Problematic Sexual Behavior to a “needs assessment” approach that focuses on considering protective factors and developing a narrative formulation that allows for scenario planning toward planning interventions. Dr. Must discussed the need to place these evaluations in a developmental and trauma-informed context, to attend to the role of exposure to pornography and other possible online harm, the role of sexual preoccupation, atypical sexual interests, attitudes supportive of sexual misbehavior, and victim awareness as key markers of risk, and the limited role of denial in these cases. 

On 6/20/24, Dr. Kruh participated in a roundtable discussion at the annual conference of the International Association of Forensic Mental Health Services (IAFMHS) in San Francisco, CA. The roundtable addressed the implementation of best forensic practices in response to juvenile justice reform in Connecticut. Since 2010, Dr. Kruh has served as an external consultant to Connecticut’s Court Support Services Division (CSSD). His work with CSSD has included training about and quality control of Dispositional Planning evaluations and Residential Placement evaluations within CSSD’s juvenile court clinics. Dr. Kruh discussed these efforts in terms of implementation science, highlighting successes and challenges. He was joined by Keith Cruise, PhD, discussing the implementation of intake processes once youth are placed in a residential setting, Michele Galietta, PhD discussing the implementation of a DBT treatment milieu within the residential settings, and Ms. Tracy Duran discussing the experience of CSSD in the implementation of these changes. 

Dr. Kruh is now a partner at National Youth Screening & Assessment Partners (NYSAP). NYSAP was founded in 2000 by Drs. Gina Vincent and Tom Grisso. It is a technical assistance and research group, dedicated to helping juvenile justice programs identify youths’ needs for behavioral health intervention and risk management. NYSAP provides training and implementation technical assistance services to agencies and programs in the areas of risk screening and risk-needs assessment, behavioral health screening (including traumatic events and symptoms), and juveniles’ competence to stand trial evaluations, as well as many other trainings for various stakeholder groups. Dr. Kruh joined NYSAP in 2013 and has been NYSAP's Director of Juvenile Competence Services since 2021. Dr. Kruh is proud to partner in NYSAP's work with esteemed colleagues, including Keith Cruise, PhD; Christina Riggs Romaine, PhD; and Kathleen Kemp, PhD; as well as Drs. Vincent and Grisso.

See www.nysap.us for more information about NYSAP's services and how to begin a collaboration. 

States are diverse in how they define competency to stand trial in juvenile courts, but across most jurisdictions there has been increased sensitivity to the role developmental immaturity can play in limiting the capacities of youths to understand the nature of the proceedings they face and to assist in their defense. Drs. Riggs Romaine and Kruh reviewed relevant concepts in normal adolescent cognitive and psychosocial development, as well as the impacts of development on childhood psychopathology. They discussed how these factors can impact four key functional components of competency, and reviewed the scientific literature on development and competency. They offered guidance on important elements of a developmentally sensitive competency evaluation, reviewed differences between the juvenile competency standards across the attending states (Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania), and explained research on how different standards seem to impact court decision making. They discussed red flags that defense attorneys should be attuned to when considering which youth to refer for a competency evaluation and they ended the training with an overview of current practices in juvenile competency remediation programs nationally.

If you are interested in having Dr. Kruh provide a training on juvenile competency evaluations through NYSAP or you are in need of a juvenile competency evaluation, please contact Dr. Kruh at [email protected].

On 9/8/23, Dr. Kruh presented a training on conducting criminal responsibility evaluations in juvenile court to forensic mental health evaluators and others at the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities Conference on Behavioral Health and the Law. In 2022, the Georgia Supreme Court held in the case of In the interest of T.B. that, excluding status offenses, juvenile respondents have a right to assert Georgia’s two affirmative criminal responsibility defenses – Insanity and Delusional Compulsion. Dr. Kruh reviewed the history of criminal responsibility defenses in juvenile courts in the United States across its 125 year history, presented the current status of juvenile criminal responsibility law nationally, discussed elements of adolescent development that make conducting these evaluations with juveniles different from evaluating adults, and offered practical guidance on how to conduct such evaluations consistent with best practices in the field.

If you are interested in having Dr. Kruh provide a training on juvenile criminal responsibility evaluations or in need of a juvenile criminal responsibility evaluation, please contact Dr. Kruh at [email protected].

On June 13th, 2023, Dr. Kruh and his colleague at National Youth Screening and Assessment Partners (NYSAP), Dr. Christina Riggs Romaine, offered forensic psychiatry fellows at the University of Michigan (who tend to focus on working with adults) a training seminar on conducting competency evaluations in Michigan’s juvenile courts. Having worked with Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services for over six years training juvenile competency evaluators state-wide, as well as various legal and clinical stakeholders, the NYSAP team has developed focused expertise on juvenile competency evaluations in Michigan. Drs. Kruh and Riggs Romaine discussed key differences in conducting competency evaluations with juveniles compared to adults. This included a focus on the role of adolescent development in these evaluations and a careful review of Michigan’s juvenile competency statute. A case study was presented to illustrate key points.

If you are interested in having Dr. Kruh, through National Youth Screening and Assessment Partners (NYSAP), provide a training to your group on the topic of juvenile competency to stand trial, or you are in need of a juvenile competency evaluation, please contact Dr. Kruh at [email protected].

​On March 16th, 2023, Dr. Kruh served as Discussant at the first ever AP-LS Conference symposium addressing Juvenile Competency Restoration Services. The session was entitled, “Juvenile Competency Restoration Across Jurisdictions: Seeking Clarity Amidst the Chaos.” The session included papers discussing three research studies  - one from Cook County Illinois, one from two Massachusetts counties, and one from the State of Texas. Dr. Kruh praised the studies for looking at restoration through a lens of individualized services seeking to identify “what works with which youth?” Two of the studies looked at what works with different diagnostic groups, categorizing diagnoses in finer tuned ways than past studies. Two studies also looked at finer tuned outcomes than past studies that looked at simpler distinctions between successfully restored vs. not restored youth. The studies highlighted the important role case management services can play in juvenile competency restoration services and the potential for more intensive services to be more successful than services of lower intensity. Dr. Kruh pointed out the need for juvenile restoration programs to collect finer tuned data to allow for more sophisticated treatment matching analyses. He also recommended research that takes unique approaches to the problem of small data sets most individual programs have, including qualitative studies, cross-jurisdictional studies, and experimental designs.

If you would like copies of the research papers presented at this symposium or you would like Dr. Kruh, through National Youth Screening and Assessment Partners (NYSAP), to provide your group training on the topic of juvenile competency remediation programming, please contact Dr. Kruh at [email protected].