Assessment Program for Delinquent Youth?System of Care Enhancement

This program seeks to create a unified evaluation process for evaluating the mental health needs of juveniles in the juvenile justice system in Chester County, PA. Elwyn Inc. will assist Chester County with utilizing the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) tool to assess the needs of children and their families. Elwyn Inc. will help Chester County adapt the CANS tool to their needs. The goals of the program are to facilitate collaboration among the juvenile justice system in Chester County and the programs that provide services to juveniles in the system, standardize data collection throughout the system of care, and train CANS assessors to work throughout the system of care. Elwyn Inc. seeks to ensure that all parts of the juvenile justice system and the system of care accept the findings of the CANS assessment and will agree to adhere to the recommendations produced by the assessment. The program will submit categorical progress reports in GMS that will report on twenty-one (21) output and performance measures that include the number of departments that create policies that reflect the mandate to collaborate and adopt them as policy in each of the system's work units, number of sub-segments of CANS created for use by juvenile justice agencies in Chester County, the number of people trained and certified in the application and interpretation of the CANS tool, and the number of youth evaluated using the CANS tool. NCA/NCF