1. Reclaiming Futures Leadership Institute April 10, 2014
Counseling-Informed Courts and Court-Informed Counselors: Working Together to Assure Success
Reclaiming Futures Leadership Institute April 10, 2014
Robert Schwebel, Ph.D.
The Seven Challenges ® LLC

2. Serve the Same Youth
Many youth with drug problems get involved in the justice system
Some commit offenses under the influence
Some commit drug-related offenses
Some commit other offenses, but abstinence is a condition of diversion, probation, or parole

3. Serve Different Functions
Counselors and courts serve distinctly different functions that often converge and overlap
Courts serve to protect the community, while incorporating the goals of rehabilitation.
Counseling professions serve the health, psychological, and personal well-being of individual clients, although this, at times, overlaps with community safety.

4. Different Methods of Influence
Judges, probation officers and parole officers use legal authority, various sanctions, and the coercive power of the courts to control behavior.
Counselors use education and counseling strategies to help clients make their own behavioral decisions; ideally informed by an understanding of social structures, which include the rule of law.

5. Collaboration Issues
Could be a perfect combination if each domain sticks to its role and allows the other to do the same: One sets the limits and the other helps individuals understand the limits and succeed within the limits.
Issues that can be problematic:
Confidentiality / The need to know
Abstinence
Drug testing
Mutual understanding about progress and sanctions

6. Court Informed Counselors
COUNSELORS NEED TO KNOW THAT:
Courts are concerned about delinquent and criminal behavior and want to prevent recidivism.
They are responsible for public safety: The buck stops here.
Courts have the power to detain or incarcerate, but can offer alternatives.
When youth are referred to counseling, they remain under court supervision. The courts are watching:
The community and courts legitimately need to know that individuals in counseling are making progress on the issues that brought them into the justice system.
When a youth robs a house to pay for drugs or kills someone drunk driving

7. Counselor-Informed Courts
Courts need to recognize that confidentiality is the cornerstone of counseling; essential to any success.
Legal Protections and ethical considerations of professionals mandate that certain information shared in the course of professional services will not be communicated to others.
Hippocratic Oath:
Whatever, in connection with my professional service, or not in connection with it, I see or hear, in the life of men, which ought not to be spoken of abroad, I will not divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret.

8. Everyone’s Best Interest
Certain information which might be of interest to the public will not be disclosed because the public is better served by allowing for privacy.
Allows individuals to talk about personal matters and get help, without fearing repercussions.
Example: Substance abuse and crime

9. Confidentiality: Exceptions
Exceptions carved out:
Duty to warn (imminent danger of violence/homicide)
Duty to protect (self harm, such as suicide)
Duty to inform (child or elder abuse)
Court order of a judge (provide information or explain why not)
When clients choose counseling as an alternative to punishment, courts will continue to monitor them.
Some degree of confidentiality must be lost: Questions becomes: How much?

10. Striking a Balance: Progress and Attendance
Reporting on progress and attendance strikes an ideal balance between the integrity of counseling and the courts’ need to know.
The public and the courts legitimately expect to know that people in counseling under court supervision are attending sessions and making progress.
Counselors need to protect the confidentiality of their clients. However, most clients can work effectively with an understanding that only progress and attendance will be reported.
Minimum necessary information

11. What if The Court Wants More?
Providing additional information is problematic. The more information that counselors disclose, the more that clients will be unwilling to talk openly and honestly about their lives. Once this happens, counseling as we know it, is over. Counselors become an arm of the courts. I see this a lot. In doing this, counselors lose their role identity. Some whine and complain that the courts “don’t get it.” Others do it without awareness of role.
I am critical of the courts’ push for more and of counselors who give it willingly.

12. Why Counselors Disclose?
Lack of critical thinking, passivity or feeling powerless.
Efforts to cooperate may be thwarted by a power arrangement that is often never discussed.
The courts rule! The courts are in charge,
The courts often control the purse springs.
Agency employees, with supervisors
My Message: Talk with the courts about this.
My message, If you’re not happy….

13. Explain the Importance
Easier said than done. The court may take it personally and speak with authority.
I thought we were a team
(Yes, but we have distinct roles)
Don’t you trust me
(It is not something personal)
Other therapists give me this information
(Their clients will stop being honest)
We pay for these services
(But we must meet professional standards and abide by our professional ethics)

14. Documenting Progress
“OK, you won’t tell me everything. The court and the public want to know that progress is being made in counseling with regard to delinquent or criminal behavior. What will be indications of progress?”
We must discuss and reach an understanding on what to look for and how to measure counseling success, and how court sanctions can enhance the process.
Attendance is not enough!

15. Abstinence To the courts, abstinence seems the obvious choice.
An abstinence based-counseling program is very appealing
Problem is: No Magic Wand
Problem: Now the court and the counselor are both telling youth how to behave: They must quit. It’s not the counselor’s job to push a behavior.
Problem: Youth in the early stages of change with regard to honestly admitting to a drug problem and being prepared for long term success with abstinence.
Mad rush for abstinence. Bad outcomes: Fakers, fighter, flee-ers, and followers.
Counselors can’t make youth quit; They try – mad rush for abstinence, hammer away, kids know drugs dangers. Happiness based counseling. Starts with the solution

16. Start Where Youth are At
Not where we wish they would be
Not where they might pretend to be
Not where they might be for a fleeting moment in time. (In front of the judge.)
THE SAD TRUTH: THE EARLY STAGES OF CHANGE. MUST WALK THEM THROUGH A DECISION-MAKING PROCESS.
Gonna quit: Department store counter; I’d smoke in a minute; in group – role play drug party – tequila; gonna quit during a group, then a fight during a break and want to get high

17. A Decision-Making Process
Hammering away about harm. It misses the most interesting question clinically: why do youth persist in using despite all the harm?
Uncover the co-occurring psychological and situational problems
Other ways to meet the needs
A long term process: Don’t expect immediate success
Redefine success in smaller increments.
Abstinence off the table?
Erase message on sweatshirt

18. Pressure to Quit
Early stages of change on one question: Do I have a problem with drugs?
Much further along in the change process on another question: Do I have a problem with the courts (or other authorities) that happens to involve drugs?
We can get honest responses and honest commitments.
We need to know who is not committed, too.
Individualized Support
Expect modest outcomes (not a fully informed decision)
Moderated by all the other problems in life (stress, abuse, depression, anger, sleep, etc.

19. Drug Testing
This is a court function and one of the ways to closely monitor drug use
Courts often ask counselors to perform the drug tests.
Not a counselor role: Counselors are not out to “catch” clients in lies
Counselors try to create an atmosphere of honesty
I suggest counselors push back or distance themselves from the tests
Bath salts and spice

20. What Counseling Progress Looks Like; What to Expect in Terms of Court Sanctions
This is the art of the collaboration.
Counselors need to explain the change process; stages of change; issues youth will be working on; what they will be looking for to indicate change in their model of counseling. Redefine success in smaller increments. (Talk with the courts about accountability)
Courts need to explain the sanctions they will use; the conditions under which they will impose sanctions.
Holding a multiply raped girl accountable. Counselors can help youth succeed within the structure set by the court.

21. Measuring Progress and Attendance in Counseling
Opening up and talking honestly
Identifying needs met by drugs
Developing new ways to satisfy needs or to tolerate unmet needs
Solving situational problems
Confronting psychological problems
Learning new coping and problem-solving skills
Gaining clarity on the harm from drugs
Progress with the court’s expectation of abstinence

22. Sanctions Purely a function of the court (Counselor vote? NO!!)
Clear limits (What happens and when)
Attainable: Within reach (not a set-up to fail)
Graduated sanctions
Same standard: different response
Counseling Informed Probation/ Judges/ Parole
The experts on behavior change in general
Reporting on progress of clients
Unintended effect
Unintended: Sheriff Arpaio; no peppermint schnaps; concrete thinking

23. Conclusions
Balance the need to know and confidentiality with progress and attendance
Drug testing by the courts for the courts
Collaborative discussion of what to expect in counseling – clarify measures of progress (informed by court sanctions)
Collaborative discussion of what to expect in terms of sanctions (informed by progress in counseling)
Overcome power and other communication barriers