| News
& Views
- Feb, 1993 Issue #20 |
ASPEN ACHIEVEMENT ACADEMY
Program Changes
Bicknell, Utah
800-283-8334
At Aspen Achievement Academy,
we are working on some program changes to expand our service
to families and to offer more options. As many of the readers
may know, our central program at this time is our 60 day wilderness
adolescent therapy program. We are now integrating a family
systems model further into our treatment approach by establishing
a parent response program. In this program parents are sent
the book "Parenting Teenagers: Systematic Training for Effective
Parenting of Teens" by Don Dinkmeyer and Gary
D. McKay, published by American Guidance Service. Parents
do assignments from this book while their child is enrolled
in the wilderness program. Additionally they are provided
with some topics for either journal or letter writing. We
suggest that they may want to use some of these assignments
in their own therapy while their child is with us. Another
component is that families sign a continuum of care agreement
in which they arrange to participate in family counseling
both during and after their child's wilderness experience.
We then communicate with their therapist at home to coordinate
treatment. Lastly we have added a fourth day to our family
program that occurs at graduation. On this day the parents
will work together as a group prior to their reunion with
their children to focus on parenting skills, strategies to
assist with successful reintegration, and support for one
another.
We have expanded our service
to our families in another way by establishing a position
for a Client Relations Coordinator. Currently Barbara
Lester, a therapist with our program, is filling this
role and is spending time working with each family to ensure
that their questions and concerns are answered and to promote
our parent response program.
Lastly, we are excited to announce
the development of an extended program that we will offer
to graduates of our wilderness program. This will be a one
to three month residential program that will assist students
who for a variety of reasons are not able or ready to return
home immediately after graduation. We anticipate beginning
this new program in March, and anyone who is interested is
welcome to call our Admissions Office at 1-800-283-8334 for
more information. Students in our extended program will receive
additional support in making the transition back to a home
environment. This new program will continue our wilderness
tradition in that students will still be living in the out-of-doors,
but now in a base camp instead of moving their campsite from
day to day. We feel that the extended program will fill a
gap in service and we look forward to watching it develop.
Copyright
© 1993, Woodbury Reports, Inc. (This article may be reproduced
without prior approval if the copyright notice and proper
publication and author attribution accompanies the copy.)
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