As a mental health professional interested in working with adjudicated youth and children who have experienced significant life stressors, interning with the Barton Clinic and being placed with the mental health specialist at the Rockdale Juvenile Court was truly a very enriching experience. The area of maltreatment is very familiar to me, as it is the focal point of my research team at North Carolina State University. My professor, Dr. Mary Haskett, has published a great deal of research in the area of child maltreatment. I look forward to sharing the information that I have obtained through my training with the Barton Clinic and my internship with my research team.

The one week training, provided by the Barton Clinic in the area of child advocacy, was very informative and a great way to start the summer internship program. I was especially interested in learning about child advocacy and helping children from a variety of professional perspectives. I enjoyed hearing the different lectures from the attorneys, the judge, the legislator, the psychiatrist, and the social workers. I also found the court observations very interesting and informative. My observations especially highlighted the need for more professionals in the field and for system reform.

I started my internship at my placement, the Rockdale Juvenile Court, one week after my training with the Barton Clinic. On my first day, I was introduced to Makini Summerville, the Mental Health Specialist that provides screenings for the juvenile court. I learned that she would be the primary person with whom I would be working for the summer. She introduced me to Judge Schneider and the rest of the staff at the juvenile court. For the first few days of my internship, I observed detention hearings in the court and shadowed Makini as she provided mental health screenings for the youth who came through the court. I later began assisting with the mental health screenings, including administering and scoring the MAYSI-2 (an instrument used to screen a variety of different mental health concerns). The judge ordered all of the youths who were adjudicated to have mental health screenings and requested them for those who appeared before the court and were not adjudicated. He based many of the conditions of his orders on these screening, such as whether or not they would ordered to attend any referral programs. I was impressed by the judge's use of referral programs in the community and his initiative to use detention only as last resort and in extreme cases.

I was also impressed by the number of referral programs that were available through the Rockdale County Juvenile Court. These programs include the STAR program, an anger management program, an Alcohol and Drug (AOD) program, a drug education program, and a mentoring program. The court also referred many of the youths to the Rockdale Mental Health Center whose mental health screenings indicated possible mental health concerns, such as depression, anxiety, or any other psychological disorder. The court also made referrals to additional treatment programs throughout the state of Georgia for the more serious issues. Examples of these programs include, the Medlin Center for psychosexual concerns and Macon Behavioral for multiple offenders with severe drug treatment needs.

I was pleased to see a number of services available in the community and Georgia as a whole that appeared to be geared toward improving the lives of the adolescents who demonstrated some socioemotional and behavioral concerns. I was concerned; however, that the programs may not all be meeting their goals and objectives in the manner that they would hope to and that would be most beneficial to the youth. As a project for my internship, I decided to do a mini-evaluation of the referral services provided through the court by interviewing the parents and youth who have been involved with the programs. I asked the parents and youth what they thought of the programs, what they saw as helpful, and what suggestions on how they felt they could be improved.

After speaking with some of the youth and families who had been referred to these various programs, I learned that many of the youth felt that their attending these programs was a waste of time. Many of the parents felt this way as well. Some of the parents; however, praised the programs and stated that they had definitely seen positive changes in their youth. It was interesting to note the differences in opinions among the parents for some of the same programs. For instance, one father raved on the mentoring program provided through the court and how wonderful the mentor had been with his son. He said that the mentor had been very helpful and that she had really connected with his son. Another parent had strong criticism for the same mentoring program and said that the mentor assigned to her son had only contacted her son once and that the mentor had never met with her son in person. This difference in opinions of the program obviously directly related to the differences in experiences. It is still interesting that the mentors came through the same mentoring program.

Several of the parents said that they felt that the AOD program made their youth's drug problems worse due to the crowd that they were around in the program and the program structure. One parent stated that the youth "sat around and talked about what getting high was like and the different drugs that give different highs which only made [her daughter] want to do drugs more." I had the opportunity to observe one of these sessions and felt that the program could have been improved with a curriculum and more evidence-based practices. Although I thought the leader was great and had a great rapport with the youth, I can understand this parent's concern about the discussions about drugs. A few parents did feel that the AOD program helped. One parent said that the program was beneficial simply because it made her child have to be somewhere every afternoon. Another parent said that the program allowed her son to have someone to talk to and that her son also received important information about drugs.

I will be writing a report based on these interviews and some of the information that I was able to obtain from the juvenile court database. This report will be provided to the Rockdale Juvenile Court as well as the Barton Clinic. Hopefully, the report will be used as a snapshot into the views of parents and youth regarding the referral services and provide some direction as to what seems to be working well and what may need to be improved. Unfortunately, due to my time constraints, I was only able to interview 22 parents and youth combined. Of those I interviewed, the majority of the youth were either involved with the AOD program, Anger Management, Mentoring, or Mental Health. The report will reflect the sample's ratings of these programs and their comments regarding these programs. However, due to the limited sample size, I would like to caution about any broad generalizations based on this report.

Overall, I feel that my internship with the Rockdale Juvenile Court through the Barton Clinic was very valuable. This internship gave me the opportunity to learn more about various important endeavors in the area of child advocacy, while allowing me to learn more about the systems that work together to improve the lives of children across Georgia. It also gave me the opportunity to meet many professionals who are dedicated to improving the lives children. I have been inspired to continue to pursue my goals as a mental health professional that works with and advocates for children who have had serious life struggles, including those who end up in the juvenile justice system. Likewise, I intend to continue to investigate ways to improve the system and services available to these children and their families.