Uni helps at-risk youth

CQUNIVERSITY’S Kevin Ronan has been working at the coal face to help youths at risk of offending come up with ways to get rid of the negative influences in their lives.

Kevin Ronan, Professor of Clinical Psychology, has been leading CQUniversity’s conduct disorder treatment evaluation program since October.

They have been receiving referrals from agencies around Rockhampton and are running a treatment service for “youth with highly disruptive forms of behaviour”.

Dr Ronan said there was an issue in the Rockhampton area relating to youth offending, with negative peer association a major predictor of juvenile crime.

“There are definitely problems within this society around juvenile offending. No question about it. We see it right at the coal face in terms of the sheer number of referrals we’re getting,” Dr Ronan said.

“So what are the things that cause it? Well one of the primary things that create problems in the youth offending area is when groups of youth, who have anti-social tendencies, start spending time together. And when they start spending time together, that tends to be quite a major predictor, often the strongest predictor, of youth offending, as well as later problems for these kids.

“The primary problem of the kids we deal with is a problem known as conduct disorder. Conduct disorder is violating other people’s rights, and violating major societal norms. So it’s the typical kind of behaviours you find in kids who get into trouble with their behaviour, the law and who get into trouble in a whole range of areas.”

The university’s program receives referrals from agencies in Rockhampton including CRYPAR, community service groups, general practitioners, and government organisations and also allows self referrals.

The program develops strategies to be used within the family home, focusing on working with the parents and caregivers as well as the young person.

“Our program tends to be carried out in the family home, and while we certainly do work with the young person, our major work is with parents and caregivers. The research shows that if you focus on parents and caregivers, you are more likely to assist for both the short term and the long term,” Dr Ronan said.

“One of the things that our intervention actually looks at, besides helping parents with strategies to help with disruptive behaviours in the home, is also to help with strategies which help the youths move away from those peers who are providing the bad influence.”

The program has received more than 30 referrals since October with more coming in, and, for those receiving the service, the evaluation has noted encouraging progress.

“The families we’ve worked with have shown very encouraging progress to date. And one of the encouraging outcomes relates to family problems and goals, with family goals revolving around various features of the child’s behaviour linked to disruption, acting up, offending and so forth.

“The improvement that we’ve seen in the first several sessions of our program is suggesting that our therapists are helping families get stuck into some of the major problems of their young person. As part of our research, we ask families to rate how they are going on the specific problems and goals they have for their young person.

“With respect to the primary family goal, and in looking at our data and related graphs, I can see that families have reported improvement a bit over 250%, from before we started working with them at the first assessment to about two months into a four to six-month program. And, based on other additional indicators, there are definitely some good things happening.

“In fact, in terms of one other indicator that we measure, we also ask our families to rate their level of satisfaction with our service, asking them on a regular basis a series of questions related to whether they are happy with the service they’re receiving. Based on these ratings, with average ratings over the first two months of the program being over nine on a 10-point scale, families appear to be quite satisfied with the service they are receiving. So our therapists are, one, appearing to help families learn strategies that are starting to produce important outcomes and two, delivering services that the families are appreciating.”

Dr Ronan is currently working to secure funding to extend the program past its first year, and based on initial findings, believes they can make a real difference.

Dr Ronan will conduct a presentation about working with highly disruptive young people and their families during the CQUniversity Research Expo the week of April 12-16.

For more information on the CQUniversity Research Week, including timetable and activities, readers can email research-expo@cqu.edu.au or phone 4923 2365.