Residential Interventions for Children, Adolescents, and Families

Now more than ever there is a need to ensure that best practices are being used in residential programs. As the focus on costs and outcomes increase, residential programs must clearly demonstrate that the interventions provided are efficient and effective. Readers will learn how to:

• Create strength-based, empowering and healing environments;
• Better engage and partner with children, adolescents and families, in meaningful ways;
• Support those who have experienced trauma and loss, and to prevent and eliminate the use of restraint and seclusion;
• Respect and include cultural indices in practices;
• Train, mentor, supervise, support and empower staff about how to deliver promising and best practices, and evidence-informed and evidence-based interventions; and
• Track long-term outcomes, and create funding strategies to better support sustained positive outcomes.

This book encourages readers to think strategically about how agencies, communities and systems can identify and implement actions that lead to positive change and how to work more collaboratively to improve the lives of children and adolescents who have experienced emotional and behavioral life challenges and their families.

Gary M. Blau, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and chief of the Child, Adolescent and Family Branch at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). In this role, he provides national leadership for children’s mental health and for creating systems of care across the United States.

Beth Caldwell, MS, is the director of the National Building Bridges Initiative and a faculty member for the National Center for Trauma-Informed Care and Alternatives to Restraint and Seclusion. She has provided consultation to residential, hospital and community programs across the United States and internationally.

Robert E. Lieberman, MA, LPC, is the CEO of Kairos, a multiservice intensive mental health program for youth, young adults, and families, and public policy chair of the American Association of Children’s Residential Centers. He trains and consults with children’s residential, hospital, and community programs nationally.