Exploring Opportunities for Supporting Juvenile Justice-Involved Youth: A Path Forward Through Expanding Graduate Training in School Psychology

School psychologists are equipped with a dynamic skill set and an ethical and moral responsibility to support the diverse needs of all youth. While juvenile justice-involved youth may not be a primary subpopulation served by all school psychologists, they are a high-needs group that requires special consideration and attention. As a professional entity, school psychologists’ knowledge and expertise are not optimally applied to serving these youth. Consequently, school psychologists may be forgoing an opportunity to improve rates of successful school and community reintegration and overall positive life outcomes for justice-involved youth. The first manuscript of this dissertation presents precipitating and protective factors to justice involvement and proposes the School Psychologists in School Reintegration (SPSR) model, a novel conceptualization for school psychological service delivery to support juvenile justice-involved youth in the often-complex reentry process. The second manuscript examines the seemingly low presence of school psychologists in supporting this subpopulation of youth and presents evidence for the expansion of school psychology graduate curricula to explicitly include material related to supporting juvenile justice-involved youth through school psychological practice. The exploratory population research survey, Perceptions of a School Psychologist\u27s Role in Supporting Juvenile Justice-Involved Youth (Gleason, 2021b), was developed and nationally distributed to school psychology graduate students and practitioners to better understand participants’ perceived preparedness, experience, School psychologists are equipped with a dynamic skill set and an ethical and moral responsibility to support the diverse needs of all youth. While juvenile justice-involved youth may not be a primary subpopulation served by all school psychologists, they are a high-needs group that requires special consideration and attention. As a professional entity, school psychologists’ knowledge and expertise are not optimally applied to serving these youth. Consequently, school psychologists may be forgoing an opportunity to improve rates of successful school and community reintegration and overall positive life outcomes for justice-involved youth. The first manuscript of this dissertation presents precipitating and protective factors to justice involvement and proposes the School Psychologists in School Reintegration (SPSR) model, a novel conceptualization for school psychological service delivery to support juvenile justice-involved youth in the often-complex reentry process. The second manuscript examines the seemingly low presence of school psychologists in supporting this subpopulation of youth and presents evidence for the expansion of school psychology graduate curricula to explicitly include material related to supporting juvenile justice-involved youth through school psychological practice. The exploratory population research survey, Perceptions of a School Psychologist\u27s Role in Supporting Juvenile Justice-Involved Youth (Gleason, 2021b), was developed and nationally distributed to school psychology graduate students and practitioners to better understand participants’ perceived preparedness, experience, competence, and interest in supporting justice-involved youth, and to demonstrate areas of growth in school psychology graduate training. In summary, Manuscripts One and Two seek to initiate a meaningful change in school psychology graduate curricula to better prepare school psychologists to effectively support and advocate on behalf of juvenile justice-involved youth