Impact of Peer Partner Support on Self Efficacy for Justice-Involved Parents: A Controlled Study of Juvenile Justice 101

Systems of care and other health-related initiatives have encouraged the proliferation of parent support policies in mental health, child welfare and education systems. However, the juvenile court system has relatively few programs that provide direct peer support for parents and little is known about the impact of parent support on families navigating the court process. Juvenile Justice 101 is one of only a few such programs. The present study examined the effect of the peer support element of Juvenile Justice 101 compared to video-only and no intervention conditions in a pre/post-test design. One hundred and ten parents agreed to participate in the study, 54 on a day with the peer support condition, 28 on a video-only day and 28 on a no-intervention day. Sixteen parents in the peer support condition were able to participate in the full program and seven parents in the video-only condition participated in the full video. Analyses disaggregate the effects of condition assignment and participation. Self-efficacy in navigating the juvenile court process improved for parents who participated in peer support but no improvement was observed for the other conditions. Parents in the peer support condition also rated peer partners higher than court staff on a dimension assessing process of care. The implications for practice and policy for peer support and family-driven services in juvenile court are discussed.