My name is
Clyde Comstock and I am the Chief Operating Officer for
the Hillside Family of Agencies. In an effort to increase
engagement with our partners across upstate New York
regarding the development of new services or new ideas
regarding challenges that our children and families face,
I would like to open up a two-way dialogue with you in the
format of an e-newsletter. Consequently, I will
occasionally be sending you updates that you may find
interesting and will be asking for your ideas and
reactions to these ideas. Our best solutions arise from
joint dialogue and I would appreciate your ideas.
For each issue
of the newsletter, I will try to pick areas that you might
find interesting! Please feel free to contact me directly
about any topics that I send out. Thanks in advance for
your assistance.
Updates:
Excerpts from
the New York Times, 7/22/07: "In the early 80s, a
therapist named Robert Longo [Founder of the International
Association for the Treatment of Sex Abusers] was treating
adolescent boys who had committed sex offenses.They
created relapse-prevention plans, based on the idea that
sex-offending is an addiction and that teenagers need to
be watchful of any triggers that might initiate their
cycle of reoffending.As it turns out, much of it was
wrong. Adult models, he notes, do not account for
adolescent development and how family and environment
affect children's behavior. Also, research over the
past decade has shown that juveniles are in several ways
very different from adult sex offenders. As one expert
puts it, 'Kids are not short adults'."
Hillside, like
most agencies across the country, followed the adult-based
treatment approach. Given the new research however, we
decided to redesign our treatment approach. For the past
two years, we have been collaborating with nationally
recognized expert Joann Schladale, M.S., L.M.F.T., to
develop a new treatment model using multi-sensory
approaches. We have drawn from empirically-based best
practices in use around the country to create a program
that is:
-
Strength
based
-
Relationship based
-
Nonjudgmental
-
Family
focused
-
Trauma
sensitive
-
Culturally competent
-
Our model
treats the whole youth and focuses on the development
of social, recreational, and educational skills as a
key piece of treating their sexually harmful behavior.
Staff at both Hillside Children's Center's Varick
Campus and the Snell Farm Children's Center have been
trained in the new model which is now used at both
campuses. If you would like a presentation on the
details of the model, please contact me and I will set
it up. If you have any comments about this approach, I
would certainly like to hear them as we anticipate
that this new model will evolve as we research our
outcomes over time.
-
The
Family Resource Center Parents as Teachers (PAT)
program currently serves about 200 families a year
through an evidence-based home visiting model that
can work with the family over 4 to 5 years. The
focus is on teaching parents structured activities
to do with their children that are designed to
increase the early development of the brain and
decrease the biological effects of neglect. All of
Crestwood's home visitors are also credentialed in
Family Development.
-
We will
be sending staff to a "train the trainers" course
conducted by Dr. Stamm to learn her approach
regarding infant brain development and the potential
use of her innovative "Brain Box," which offers
families tools to use with their children to
stimulate brain development. We then expect to
incorporate those learnings into our Parents As
Teachers program.
Many
thanks for reading all of this! I would be happy to share
additional information if any of you are interested.
Please feel free to share this e-mail with anyone else who
might be interested. You can visit
www.hillside.com
to learn more about Hillside Family of Agencies.
