Juveniles’ Competence to Stand Trial

The demand for forensic evaluations of juveniles’ competence to stand trial (CST) has increased rapidly in recent years. Many states have adopted new statutes and requirements for evaluating and adjudicating juveniles’ CST. This has increased the need for consultation and training of clinical and legal professionals on this topic, as well as the need for the support of effective decision making by mental health and juvenile justice administrators. NYSAP offers the following services to meet your needs in this area. NYSAP professionals have played a key role nationwide for 25 years in research on juveniles’ CST and developing standards for juveniles’ CST for forensic clinical practice, law and policy.

Our Juveniles’ Competence to Stand Trial Consultation Services

We provide the following types of consultation related to implementation and proficiency in best practices in CST evaluations to forensic and mental health systems:

Trainings

NYSAP offers a variety of relevant trainings. Some are for clinicians who perform juvenile competence to stand trial (CST) evaluations and others for those who need to understand such evaluations. Most trainings are also available with remote technology. For a complete list of trainings, please check our training page.

On-demand trainings are available addressing the following topics:

• Case Conceptualization in Juvenile Competency Evaluations
• Conceptualizing and Applying Developmental Immaturity in Juvenile Competence Evaluations
• The Five Question Model to Conducting Juvenile Competency Evaluations
• Conceptualizing and Applying Developmental Immaturity in Juvenile Competence Evaluations
• Developmentally Sensitive Competence Interviewing Using the JACI

Systems Development

Consultation to assist state/county mental health and juvenile justice administrators to develop policies and procedures for providing juvenile CST evaluations. Issues include: system organization; court-to-evaluator referral; developing a professional evaluation workforce; setting evaluation standards; and determining the system’s needs for clinician training. NYSAP professionals have developed Guides for juvenile CST systems development:

Assets Mapping

We can provide asset mapping for courts to support appropriate referrals for youth in need of competency assessment and restoration and highlight areas for community capacity development. This process has two aims: to support appropriate referrals to effective resources based on areas of need identified in competency evaluations and support capacity building to improve competency restoration services in the local community.

Quality Assurance

Consultation to develop an internal process for monitoring the quality of clinicians’ juvenile CST evaluations and reports, assuring best-quality evaluations for the courts on a continuing basis.

NYSAP Juvenile CST Evaluation “Audit”

A process by which samples of juvenile CST reports can be submitted by clinicians for review by NYSAP professionals, who then provide detailed written feedback based on national best-practice standards. NYSAP professionals have published two of the nation’s leading guides for standards in this area:

Additional Publications by NYSAP Professionals