Therapy

Individual Therapy

Every student at Germaine Lawrence receives individual therapy at least once a week. This gives students a chance to form and maintain a trusting relationship with their Treatment Coordinator in a safe setting while they explore difficult issues. In therapy, students learn skills to successfully identify and verbalize feelings and concerns about her past history, present relationships and future plans.

Germaine Lawrence programs campus-wide are incorporating Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) into their clinical work. This cognitive behavioral approach, which has been empirically proven to be highly effective inserving individuals who engage in life-threatening behaviors, focuses on teaching residents skills to regulate their emotions and manage their behaviors in safe ways.

Individual therapy helps the student plan for a successful transition from Germaine Lawrence, by identifying future goals and prevention plans for the challenges she will face when back in the community.

Family Therapy

Family involvement is critical to our students’ success, both while they are at Germaine Lawrence and after they return home. Their family’s participation gives them hope, something to work towards. It also provides opportunities to solve problems and practice skills that will make reunification not just possible, but successful. Even when independent living as opposed to family reunification is the goal, we continue to emphasize the importance of strengthening and maintaining family relationships.

We hold family therapy every other week. Initially, the focus of family therapy is to help the family members connect with Germaine Lawrence and feel comfortable as they learn about our program. The Treatment Coordinator also uses family therapy to gather information about the student’s history as well as identify family focused treatment goals. As the treatment continues, the focus of family therapy shifts to identifying ways the student and her family can strengthen their relationship, and improve family communication and functioning.

Family visits are also a critical part of a girl’s treatment and every effort is made to support safe, successful and consistent visits of a student with her family. Overnight visits are encouraged after increased visiting time at home and in the community. Since we see family visits as treatment, they are not privileges that must be earned. Visits are unique learning opportunities; problems during visits provide useful material for therapy sessions.

In order to assist parents in being involved, Germaine Lawrence holds parent orientation, support groups and special events throughout the course of a student’s treatment. Family events and supports include:

• Monthly family events and/or dinners take place in all dorms. These include pizza and game nights, cookouts, bingo nights and theme nights.
  
• The Family Newsletter is sent monthly to all families to ensure that families are up to date on agency happenings and family events.
  
• Family support groups in which the group members determine topics of discussion.
  
• Multi-Family Eating Disorder Group meets bi-monthly to provide education, skill building and support for family members.
  
• Twice a year, parent orientations are held with teacher conferences. Senior administrators and teachers provide a dinner and orientation.
  
• A Parent Advisory Group meets twice a month to come up with ways of increasing family participation and parent empowerment.
  
• We hold a number of agency wide family projects throughout the year, such as a family wall hanging project that involved 18 families, each of whom decorated a square depicting what they do as a family to strengthen family connections.
  
• We administer a Family Enrichment Fund to directly assist and support families in their daughter’s treatment. Through the fund, we have assisted with overnight hotel stays for families who travel long distances, provided compensation for babysitting of siblings, assisted with transportation fees and helped cover interpreter fees.

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Group Therapy

For teenagers who naturally look to their peer group for support and validation, group therapy is often the most powerful therapeutic intervention. Working on relevant issues with peers allows them to join together for support around challenging emotional issues. For some residents, the intimacy of individual therapy is too difficult to tolerate and group therapy is an easier modality for them to address their treatment issues.

Under the supervision and guidance of skilled staff, girls are able to impact each other in ways that produce positive, lasting change. The group gives girls immediate feedback and support from her peers and gives them a chance to practice specific behaviors they are working on in individual therapy.

Germaine Lawrence provides a wide variety of group therapy experiences that reflect the different needs of the girls we serve. All girls participate in Community Groups weekly in their programs. The purpose of Community Groups is to provide a forum for girls to discuss, and influence, their lives at Germaine Lawrence. Girls are encouraged to be honest and assertive with their views, while being respectful and supportive to their peers.

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Other groups reflect girls' special issues or needs. They include:

• Sexual Abuse Survivors' Group
  
• Substance Abuse
  
• AA
  
• Loss and grief
  
• Body Image and Eating Disorder
  
• Violence prevention
  
• Expressive therapy
  
• Sexual Offending
  
• Fire Setting