Trails Carolina Supports Struggling Families Through The Trails Family Institute

Trails Carolina Wilderness Therapy provides clinical help to struggling families in need of support. The Trails Family Institute, family programming for Trails Carolina, offers therapeutic help for families with children in Trails Carolina as well as families in need of clinical assistance who have not yet sent their children to a residential or wilderness therapy program.

In the past year, the Trails Family Institute has started offering Family Intensives to families who have not yet placed their child into a residential or wilderness therapy program. A Family Intensive is a personalized week-long family wilderness adventure, tailored to each family's emotional, physical, and clinical needs.

"During these family intensives, a variety of treatment occurs. Throughout the week, individual, couple, and family sessions take place," says Jason McKeown MS, LMFT, CPE, DCC, Clinical Director and Family Therapist at Trails Carolina. "This assures that the whole family is getting what they need out of the experience in order to promote growth. This intervention has been incredibly powerful for many families."

After a family intensive has ended, the Trails Family Institute continues to support the family for up to two months ensuring that the clinical work carried out is being incorporated back home.

In addition to a family intensive, the Trails Family Institute also offers clinical assessments and summaries of these assessments to struggling families.

"Clinical assessments allow us to get a really great picture of areas of strength and areas that require growth within a family," comments McKeown. "We can provide them to families who have utilized Trails Family Institute programming as well as families in need of a clinical review. These assessments can help their therapist or clinical professional back home address the assessed areas."

The Trails Family Institute has helped hundreds of families work through emotional and behavioral difficulties that hinder family growth. Families leave the program feeling reconnected and ready to build strong, trusting relationships.

Trails Carolina is a wilderness therapy program based just outside of Asheville, North Carolina that offers a multi-dimensional wilderness therapy model to troubled adolescents, ages 10-17. Trails capitalizes upon the profound effects of a student's wilderness experience, and then combines that experience with strong clinical assessments and therapy.