Violence Risk Assessment for Youth Using the SAVRY Fee: $600 Commitment: 15 hours This on-demand professional training program on Violence Risk Assessment for Youth Using the SAVRY is presented by Gina Vincent, PhD and Ivan Kruh, PhD, in partnership with the National Youth Screening & Assessment Partners (NYSAP).
The SAVRY Version 2 (Borum, Bartel, & Forth, 2006) assesses risk for violence/aggression, non-violent reoffending, residential aggression, and the dynamic risk and protective factors associated with these acts among adolescents. The SAVRY is a well-validated risk assessment instrument for violence, with evidence of its validity for both girls and boys and across several racial/ethnic groups. The program includes a brief overview of research on adolescent offending, developmental issues related to risk, and known dynamic and static risk factors. This is followed by a discussion of the different approaches to decision-making; namely, unstructured clinical judgment, actuarial, and structured professional judgment (SPJ).
The bulk of the program is spent teaching participants how to collect data needed to use the SAVRY, how to rate its items, and how to make final determinations of one’s level of risk. The program also covers the risk-need-responsivity framework and developing clinical formulations for treatment/intervention recommendations.
This program is designed for clinicians practicing in areas in which assessing a youth’s violence risk or risk for general offending is relevant. In most cases, this will be clinicians who conduct assessments of youth involved in the legal system, in either forensic mental health contexts (i.e., court-based evaluations) or other juvenile justice contexts (e.g., juvenile correctional settings). There may be traditional clinical contexts for which these skills may also be relevant, such as residential treatment settings or psychiatric hospitals.
Narrative Risk Formulations of Youths Who Have Sexually Harmed Fee: $105 Commitment: 3 hours Our understanding of the risks and needs of youths who have sexually harmed has advanced in recent years. Whereas assessments once looked only at those risk factors that signal dangerousness, they now employ a more comprehensive approach that takes into account:
The youth’s protective factors
The youth’s developmental status
Multiple contexts in which the youth exists (e.g., home, school, and community environments)
Further, many authors have pointed out that identifying risk factors is not nearly as helpful as explaining how risk factors and protective factors have occurred and combined to make harmful behaviors more or less likely to occur. Over time, these risk and protective factors form a narrative—a story of how the youth came to behave the way they have. In this training, Drs. Kruh and Cruise explain how the risk assessments of the past have evolved into comprehensive, structured methods for understanding and explaining a youth’s potential for harmful behavior. Narrative risk formulations are a key component of assessment and management in mental health and criminal justice settings. The presenters examine:
A model for narrative risk formulation
Essential knowledge about adolescent development and developmental psychopathology
Current data on adolescent sexual re-offense rates
How trauma plays a role in sexual abuse by adolescents
“Scenario planning” to identify situations for potential abuse
Fellowship Trained & Board Certified in Forensic Psychology Specializing in Forensic Mental Health Assessment of Justice-Involved Youth