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Abstract: 

School mental health professionals, administrators, teachers, and parents are sometimes dismayed to discover that the line separating “disciplinary” problems from “delinquency” is not always an easy line to draw. This issue of EBDY is devoted to interventions used when behavioral problems become serious. The focus is principally on cognitive behavioral interventions. Practitioners who deal with at-risk youth, especially those youth who are identified as emotionally and/or behaviorally disturbed, have experienced a metamorphosis in both theory and practice. No longer are we considered caretakers who merely manage inappropriate or outrageous behavior. We are expected to do more, and to do more with less. The good news is that our field has evolved from a trial and error approach—do what feels right and if it doesn’t work, try something else—to a science that is based on sound research and theory, established standards of practice, and a collection of programs and services that have been shown to be evidence based, effective, and cost efficient. The evolution of these cognitive behavioral programs and interventions is well documented elsewhere. For our purposes here, we need only reiterate that practitioners now have available a group of program interventions that are based upon sound theory and have been well researched to establish their effectiveness and cost efficiencies. Beyond that, organizations have devoted resources to insure staff development and practitioner competencies. Further, there are training institutions that now adopt standards of education established by certifying boards that require students to be proficient when implementing programs, heightening awareness that those practitioners must insure they implement programs with integrity and fidelity. In other words, it is now well recognized that practitioners must be trained to deliver programs as they have been developed and designed and to follow established protocols without deviation. In this issue, we begin with an interview with Dr. Edward Latessa, head and professor of the Division of Criminal Justice Services at the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Latessa shares his years of experience as a teacher and researcher in the area of programming and organizational development in justice systems. His remarks about the population we serve, his approach to training staff and students, his thoughts on program interventions and their utility for the practicing professional are insightful and uplifting. We are fortunate to have his sage advice as a foundation for this issue of EBDY .Next are two articles that we selected to give readers hands-on, practical information and strategies to implement their programs and services effectively. First, we have an article by Lori Brusman-Lovins and Brian Lovins that describes a model and a structured process to implement programs and services for oppositional defiant and behaviorally disordered youth. The authors’ practical, hands-on descriptions provide the reader with cogent and clear strategies to better implement programs. Their model, developed at the University of Cincinnati, is being evaluated and used in various agencies. We then turn to a once underserved population that is now the subject of a great deal of new research: girls. The authors of this third article, Elisabeth Rice, Juliana Taymans, Margaux Brown, and Amy Srsic, have all studied and devoted energy to serving girls at risk. They provide us here with a remarkable, insightful view of the needs of girls who have emotional and behavioral disabilities. In an easy to read, practitionerfriendly manner, they provide us with research, applications of theory and practice, and a clear, direct series of approaches that practitioners can easily incorporate into their professional “tool box.” They also challenge us by a call to action to deal with this population by using evidence-based cognitive interventions that have been shown to work.

Keywords: Cognitive-behavioral interventions; Implementation of Evidence-Based Practices; EBDs in Girls; Youthful offenders; therapist competency; special education

Affiliations:  1: Guest Editor.