Troubled Teens Resources

When a troubled teen is given chance after chance to clean their act up and they just keep getting into trouble it might be time to send them to a troubled teen boarding school.

“The 15-year-old narrowly avoided a detention sentence, after she refused to co-operate with the Youth Offending Service and continually breached her curfew order.
The girl had been sentenced to a supervision order with a curfew earlier this year for a number of offences, including being drunk and disorderly, punching and headbutting her boyfriend outside the Wrexham Tesco store and smashing equipment in a Wrexham youth home.
However, she failed to comply with this order on a number of occasions, despite being given a last chance to do so in September.
Magistrates at Wrexham Youth Court heard representations from the Youth Offending Service, who expressed concerns about the girl’s safety and said she was “spiralling out of control”.
The youth offending team told the court the only way to deal with the teenager was to send her to a detention unit.
Jane Meyers, defending, told the court she agreed and saw no other option.
She said the common thread through was alcohol misuse.
Ms Meyers said the teenager, who had been in care since the age of two, had no previous records until these offences and had found it difficult to adjust over the last two years after leaving her foster home of 10 years and being relocated.
She added her client was very vulnerable and incidents of self harming were becoming more serious.
However, magistrates decided not to send the girl to a detention unit but sentenced her to a 12-month conditional discharge.
They defended the decision, saying they were putting more responsibility on the teenager to prove she could sort herself out with the help of her social workers.”

Tipton Academy is an effective option for troubled teen boys.
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Teen crisis intervention has become a familiar topic to the general public due to the popular A&E show, ‘Intervention’. And for most people, it is a drama that they would prefer to confine to the small screen. For those parents of teenagers caught up in teen drug abuse or alcoholism, the very idea of confronting their always sullen, often hostile teens is more than intimidating.

And it is if you go it alone. That is never advised. In fact, a great deal of counseling, talking, organizing and research goes into laying the groundwork for an intervention. The following example is an excerpt from one family’s intervention for their alcoholic father.

“Anyone who is close to the addicted person…can initiate an intervention. Typically, those involved will meet with a counselor to learn about their loved one’s addiction. Then they discuss how the addict’s behavior has affected them. This discussion helps everyone to focus on the consequences of addiction and not on judging or blaming the addicted person.
[…]
“First of all, we met for months with a social worker, Barry, who specialized in addiction counseling. We learned from him what alcoholism is all about. That’s really important, because it helped us understand what was going on with Dad.

“Then Barry got all of us to talk about how Dad’s alcoholism affected each of us. These stories helped us concentrate on what we wanted Dad to understand about what his alcoholism was doing to us. Barry explained that it was important that the intervention wouldn’t put Dad on the defensive. It wasn’t about calling Dad a bad person, it was just talking about how the alcoholism had affected the family.”
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There are many schools for troubled teens that offer strict rules and regulations that some teens need , but some teens need something different. There are new types of schools that are not only giving teens an education but teaching them new skills and helping them gain a new out look on life and the world. These new schools use different kinds of ways to help teens at risk that some other schools don’t offer.

“Outback feels it is critical for students to continue their education during their expedition, rather than taking a break from school altogether. Outback, in conjunction with Woodland Hills School, has designed a unique academic program that helps students continue their education while receiving intense clinical support, treatment, and development. We find that students rediscover a joy of learning while in the Outback program - so they are inspired to succeed in school when they return home.”

“Kids relate to symbols - clothes, name brands, hot gadgets, and celebrity icons.Outback’s use of metaphors and experiential education to effect a symbolic rite of passage have more impact and are more effective than talk-therapy traditionally used for adults. Students begin a transformational journey against the backdrop of mountains and blue sky.”

“In an independent research study by Keith C. Russell, PH. D., of the University of Idaho’s Wilderness Research Center, various outdoor education programs for adolescents — including three Aspen programs — participated. The study concluded that participation in such outdoor programs resulted in clinically significant reductions in severity of behavioral and emotional symptoms. More than 83% of participants made such improvement. Almost half (46%) of participants returned to a normal range as a result of treatment. After an 18-month study, researchers concluded that the participants not only maintained their outcomes, but continued to improve after treatment.”

If sending your teen away to a boarding school full time is something you feel is too extreme for your teen , there are many other programs to consider. These programs will still let your teen get the credits that they need for there education , but they will get treatment at the same time in a much different way.
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Teen crisis intervention is very often conducted via community supported programs, school interventions and other efforts. Then sometimes, an intervention occurs one on one. Sometimes it is a story that turns teens at risk away from the temptation of drugs. Especially in a time when media and the culture suggest that getting high has no consequences.

The following is excerpted from a father’s post who wants very much to make an impact on the teens in his community.

“I heard the news Tony Parham had committed suicide, Then Howard Larsen tried to kill himself by jumping out of a car on the fwy, There were two more suicides that year. Monte Burlingame freaked out on acid. He was running in the middle of the street screaming …He was never the same after that.
[…]
Mark michaels was found attached to a Basket ball pole at the school one morning with one arm around the pole walking and spinning around and around he had been there all night. mumbling incoherently…

Mark Morisson was pulled over by the cops he had a bag on him. he swallowed it and started to fight with th cops, the bag broke and he died in Huntington Beach jail of a heart attack from all the Coke in his system.”

The parent is utilizing a website, Parent Team, that was created by a community of parents who are using every tool they can to stop the devastation teen drinking and drugging have wrought in their town.

“I’m here because I’ve been down your road and I know what’s coming around the next corner for you. There is a fatal wreck waiting to happen with your or some of your friends name in it.”

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A New England public high school is conducting a series of parental forums to discuss how the schools could intervene to prevent a teenager from ever starting down the road to drug abuse to begin with. Attended by only a dozen parents, it is yet one small example of thousands of schools across the country grappling with the seemingly never ending cycle of drug abuse that still plagues too many generations of America’s young.

Intervention sounds so intrusive, so likely to violate the rights and privacy of the individual. In a perfect world, the state’s intervention into a teenager’s life wouldn’t be necessary. In a perfect world, parents would devise their own solutions to dealing with troubled teens. One has to look at the state’s involvement in the private lives of families as a mixed blessing. The fact of the matter is, too many parents have abdicated their roles as guides and mentors and disciplinarians and have instead chosen to be their teenagers best bud. Some parents use drugs and alcohol themselves and find it easier to join their teens rather than accept responsibility for either their or their troubled teen’s behavior.

“… One of her biggest beefs…is that so many parents are out there saying, ‘As long as I know they’re here and I have their keys, they’re not driving and drinking. And it’s OK for them to drink.’ That’s not acceptable.” “But it happens,” … “This is not acceptable from either a legal or an educational standpoint, but we see it a lot. There are parents who drink with their children. There are parents who smoke marijuana with their children. For educators, it’s very frustrating.”
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Teen crisis intervention by institutions that were meant to educate , not rehabilitate, have simply become a fact of life. In many cases, it has been the only doorway available for a teen to exit a troubled home and find access to constructive behavioral models and alternative coping skills.