Portage County Juvenile Court program helping youths at risk of substance abuse

Samantha knows how tough being a teenager can be.

“I’m learning how to cope with emotions instead of wanting to just get high all the time,” said the 17-year-old Portage County resident.

Samantha is not her real name. She did not want to be identified.

In answer to the question of what kind of emotions, she said, “Mainly, like, being angry and sad.”

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Samantha is one of a number of beneficiaries of a Portage County Juvenile Court program that helps young offenders deemed at risk of alcohol and drug addiction.

“It’s a, essentially, a program where they help youths to think differently,” said Juvenile Court Judge Patricia Smith.

And now the state has recognized the court and its probation department for the program’s effectiveness and Samantha for the hard work she put in to complete the program.

The Ohio Department of Youth Services presented its director’s award to the court at the Ohio Association of Juvenile Court Judges winter conference in early December. A separate award was given to Samantha.

“We are super, super excited,” Smith said. “It's a very proud moment for us.”

Class curriculum is ‘evidence based’

The court started the 39-week Cognitive Behavior Intervention for Substance Abuse program in 2017.

“The curriculum we use is from the University of Cincinnati,” said Lenny Sorboro, the court’s director of youth rehabilitation. “It’s an evidence-based program.”

According to the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy’s website, “Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a relatively short-term, focused psychotherapy for a wide range of psychological problems including depression, anxiety, anger, marital conflict, loneliness, panic, fears, eating disorders, substance abuse, alcohol abuse and dependence and personality problems. The focus of this therapy is on how you are thinking, behaving, and communicating today rather than on your early childhood experiences.”

The court’s program is operated by the probation department, a division of Sorboro’s department. The program is directly run by Dan Patz, an independent licensed chemical dependency counselor, and probation officers Sara Jones and Jessica Tanba. All three went through training in the program’s curriculum in 2017.

“What I’m impressed by is the staff,” Sorboro said. “They make the words come to life, their words on the paper, and their interaction and their dedication to the youth that participate in that program. It’s telling. So that, I think, is what’s brought us some success.”

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Smith seconded this.

“What I can say is that we are extremely proud of our probation department and the hard work that they put in on making sure that they do this CBI,” she said. “Everyone is trained in our probation department, or most of the staff in our probation department are trained, on cognitive behavioral intervention.

The program is a class, Sorboro said, adding that if a child needs therapy, the court turns to various community agencies for help. Program curriculum includes motivational engagement with the youth, cognitive restructuring, emotional regulation, social skills, problem solving, and relapse prevention. The weekly sessions are about 90 minutes each.

The program works best when it is done in-person, in the probation department’s conference room, rather that virtual. So COVID interrupted it, especially in 2020.

“But we were able to ramp it back up in [20]21,” Sorboro said.

Generally classes include six to eight at-risk youths.

 “The probation officers who are trained in CBI work with the youth try to get them to focus on what are their triggers and how those triggers can contribute to their substance abuse and then how do we identify those triggers," Smith said. "How do we avoid and manage our behavior so that we don't fall into that same pattern.”

Sorboro said there have been participants as young as 12 or 13, but the typical participant is 15 to 18. Often, completion of the program is a condition of court-ordered probation or a dismissal of the case against the youth.

“It may be for drug and alcohol-related offenses, but an initial charge may not be related to drugs and alcohol,” said Sorboro. “But through assessments that we conduct here, we recognize and identify that they may have a moderate to high risk in the area of substance abuse.”

Soroboro said that about half of the youths who start the program complete it, a success given the challenges.

“The population of addiction, it’s a difficult population,” he said. “If you have one success, then it’s one success and that’s the way I look at it. There’s kids who will fail throughout the program. But we still try to keep them engaged in the program.”

For kids who don’t complete the program on the first go, there is the possibility of coming back later and either starting over or joining in at the point they left off. Even if they never complete the program, said Sorboro, there is hope they will get something out of it.

“They’ve at least been identified and we’re giving them at least some of the tools necessary to hopefully lead them away from a life of struggling in areas of drug and alcohol use,” he said.

Sorboro said the court has dealt with kids who have struggled with drug use that has included opioid, heroin and meth use, adding, “It’s a tough population to work with.”

The program began when now-retired Judge Robert Berger was on the juvenile court bench. Sorboro said the court was something of a pioneer.

More:Passion for working with children led Berger to juvenile court bench

“When we implemented this, we were the first juvenile department to do this in the state of Ohio,” he said. “I mean, there wasn’t any other probation departments that were doing it at the time of implementation. And I don’t know of any that are doing it right now, other than Portage, on the community basis. They may be doing this intervention in a detention facility or a residential facility, but they’re not doing it with their probationers.”

Making ’the connection’

Samantha was 16 when she went through the program, a condition of her probation.

“Before I was on probation, I was always in drama,” she said. “And what led me to getting on probation is I fought someone and I was just a troublemaker before probation. I used to smoke a bunch of weed and drinking. Yeah.”

She said she was not sure she wanted to be there when the program started, but began getting into it after awhile.

“When I first started, I was, like, this is gonna be a long program,” she said. “But the more I got into it and got to know the people that work there, it was more like trying to get to know people and being confident to actually open up in there.”

Smith said this is one of the things the staff running the program is effective at, getting “buy-in” from the youth in it, getting them to accept it and take advantage of the help it gives.

“So we know that we can maybe save some of these kids from the heartache of becoming full blown addicts and abusers and ending up in our adult court system,” she said.

Samantha said she went through some other programs, as well, including anger management and a “girl circle,” a group of girls who get together to learn how to stay safe on the internet and about human trafficking and sexual harassment. She said those have helped, too, but she primarily credits the lengthier cognitive behavior program.

She added that she is grateful to Smith and the probation staff.

Sorboro said he nominated Samantha for the award and is pleased that she won it.

“From beginning to end, the struggles that this youth had,” he said. “She made the connection with the information that was being provided to her and she used all of those tools and was able to successfully, with a lot of barriers in front of her, work her way through those things and got herself off probation because she complied with all the requirements of the program and that’s why I nominated her. From the beginning to end, where she started at with her substance abuse and where she ended, I mean, it was a dramatic turnaround.”

Samantha said she learned she had been nominated for the award the day her probation ended and learned that she won it the week before Thanksgiving.

“I was proud of myself,” she said “I was actually really excited because I've never had an experience like that. So I was excited to be a part of it.”

Samantha’s mother, who was present to see Samantha get the award, agreed that the change in her daughter has been remarkable.

“The program really worked for her and she has become a whole different person since beginning our journey through probation and all the recovery,” she said. “I'm pretty proud of her. She did a whole 360 on her attitude and getting in trouble and stuff.”

Samantha said she is staying out of trouble, including at school, and is currently looking for a job. She has learned to deal with her feelings in healthier ways that do not involve chemicals and continues to get better at it.

This includes how to react when other people are difficult.

“Like what to say when people are trying to start drama and now I just, like, kind of walk away from it all the time,” she said.

Reporter Jeff Saunders can be reached at jsaunders@recordpub.com.