Brad Bogue has a well-deserved reputation as a dynamic thinker and groundbreaking researcher in community corrections.  So when Brad turned his thoughts to the question of what makes a high-quality risk assessment interview, we were all ears and we bet you will be too.  Risk Assessments are a big part of setting the right path for our clients and working towards community safety. We at CorrectTech support this through our Assessment module.  Because your assessments are scored and part of every client’s electronic record, we create more time for practitioners to conduct the interview, interpret the results and create a risk reducing case plan using evidence-based practices.  We love that we support community corrections practitioners in having fewer scoring errors and less time focused on calculations – helping you focus on what matters most.

Fun with Data Management…. Really?

How many of you community corrections practitioners dread pulling together month end, quarter end or worse…year end program results? 

So, you are wondering why I would include “fun” in the same sentence as data management.  What’s more surprising is it’s me who is having fun with data management.  I am not a big data person.  Research, spreadsheets, data analysis, not my cup of tea. Include me in on a problem solving, “what works” or implementation discussion and I’ll let someone else do all the research. 

However, you’d be surprised how much better data can be when you don’t have to do any data entry to view basic and complex data analysis for your community corrections program operations.  

Check out an example of just one way we make data fun in our newest data management video “Fun with Data Management - Monitor History”.

What we learned about the Opioid Crisis at the 2017 ICCA Conference in Seattle

The Opposite of Addiction is not Sobriety.  This may have been the most powerful statement we heard at the ICCA conference where researchers and practitioners of many fields and backgrounds came together to learn, share information and knowledge; pushing each other to keep learning and doing more in our pursuit to do what works best.  Community Corrections has never been short of challenges and barriers.  It is encouraging to see dedicated professionals working hard to break through.

The conference encompassed workshops surrounding some of these challenges, including the opioid crisis, relapse prevention, housing and employment, and our jails being filled with a large amount of people with significant mental illness and trauma.  While there were many outstanding workshops at the Seattle conference, in this blog we will talk about discussions and community corrections solutions with relationship to the opioid crisis.

The Opioid Crisis

Who are some of the people who have been impacted directly by this crisis? 

Our reflections of APPA 2017 from the inside, outside and beyond.

Last month we found ourselves positioned in a good space as we went about setting up our booth at APPA’s 42nd Annual Training Institute, held this year in a particularly exciting place, New York City. We were positioned on the Expo floor at a busy nexus of booths and buffet tables, and our team reconnected with and met practitioners from all over the country. Each brought their knowledge, progressive nature and passion for EBP. We attended several interesting sessions as well, which highlighted important challenges facing the corrections industry.

The Big Apple proved the perfect backdrop for APPA, and we explored some of the city’s unique places. Following are a few highlights from inside the conference, activities outside it, and challenges going forward.

Note from the editor: This blog is a continuation of the EBP Practice Models blog series started by this blog’s author Evan C. Crist, Psy.D. and other industry leading authorities on practice models, Brad Bogue, Matt Moore and Tom O’Connor.

This blog has two parts.

Part I, The Changing Function of a Case Manager, paints a picture of how the role of community corrections practitioners is constantly changing as the field and its stakeholder’s expectations evolve and expand.

Part II, More Effective Treatment, explains the need for a coherent intervention strategy based on logic and research to help case managers do the treatment oriented work we are expecting more and more from them. We suggest Practice Models are the answer to our need for this intervention strategy. Although EBP has been viewed by some as a nuisance, adding more work to already overloaded case managers, read below to see how we think differently.

PART I – The Changing Function of a Case Manager

Case Manager or Psychologist? Or both?

As a participant of community corrections for the better part of two decades, I’ve noticed an interesting and predictable shift in the industry. Yes, it is becoming more treatment oriented, but the change that I find more interesting is the shift to teaching paraprofessionals to deliver specialized services generally allotted for master’s level or doctoral level therapists.

I’ve seen this happen throughout my psychologist career and I don’t think it is good or bad, rather a normal progression of a maturing industry that needs to provide more services to a larger population without the benefit of a significant increase in government funded resources.

But why?