Juvenile Detention Training Needs Assessment

The first objective of this paper is to review all of the literature on job-related skills and training needs in order to establish a base of staff development knowledge for juvenile detention. The second objective is to synthesize contemporary findings to discover patterns or common practices that may help to clarify the role of the direct caseworker in juvenile detention and the training needs of direct care staff, to determine whether these needs are stable across staff and over time, and to decide how juvenile detention training needs should be implemented. The report recommends that: (1) training needs assessments in juvenile detention be upgraded and future training needs assessments use multiple methods whenever possible; (2) detention centers develop, strengthen, and expand inservice training programs; (3) detention centers provide specified minimum numbers of training hours in preservice and orientation, basic detention skills, and annual planned training; and (4) detention staff training be presented by strategies that emphasize learning-by-doing and other experientially based methods. Tables, figures, references