Peer Support Services
JR is actively expanding access to Certified Peer Counselors (CPC) for young people we serve. CPCs are professionals who are credentialed through the Department of Health. Personal life experience is a core strategy in their toolbox for engaging young people, inspiring hope, and exploring possibilities. In addition to expanding access by establishing Peer Support Specialist positions, JR partners with community providers and other peer-centered organizations to increase opportunities to connect with people who have shared cultures and backgrounds to support young people with navigating and self-advocating with systems and planning their future.
JR continues the work that was accelerated through partnership with Governor Inslee’s Results Washington office, sister agencies, and community partners as a focus of the Governor’s goal to “update the behavioral health system, advance racial equity, and expand career pathways by elevating the voices of people with lived expertise and amplifying the Certified Peer Counselor (CPC) role in the Juvenile Justice system.” Watch a brief video about Peer Support.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)
DBT is a supportive, therapeutic, skill-building approach that focuses on teaching new and effective behaviors to replace dangerous and damaging behaviors that have negatively influenced the young person’s life and their community. Young people with identified mental health needs are assigned a DBT Specialist who works with them and consults with their case manager.
DBT combines individual counseling and group skills training to help the young person examine their healthy living goals, behaviors that get in the way of those goals, and the factors that influence those behaviors. DBT balances accepting a person for who they are and working towards behavior change.
DBT focuses on the following treatment areas when working with youth and their families in residential care.
DBT Skill Acquisition
Teaching youth new skills to utilize in their daily lives to replace the behaviors that have led them to trouble is a critical part of DBT. All youth attend DBT skills groups to learn a variety of behavioral skills in four modules.
- Mindfulness to increase self-awareness, impulse control, and ability to notice thoughts, emotions, and sensations without having to act on them.
- Emotion Regulation: Learn more about how emotions work and skills for responding to them in a healthy and safe way.
- Distress Tolerance to learn strategies for dealing with and getting through high-stress and crisis situations without making things worse.
- Interpersonal Effectiveness: To nurture healthy relationships and navigate challenging relationships with a balance of self-respect, considerateness, and effective assertiveness.
DBT Skill Generalization
Generalization focuses on transferring skill usage to situations young people will return to. Practicing effective skills in a controlled environment such as our facilities can be an effective learning opportunity. Generalization focuses on preparing young people to use skills in all relevant contexts when returning to their community.
Washington State Aggression Replacement Training (ART)
Aggression Replacement Training is a group-based, cognitive behavioral intervention designed to teach skills to manage anger without aggression, reduce anti-social behaviors, and offer alternative prosocial skills. ART classes are conducted three times per week for a ten-week series. Each of the three weekly classes focuses on one of the ART components:
Social Skills Training
Participants role-play and problem-solve using a set of 50 interpersonal skills and scenarios. The practice aims to develop prosocial skills through modeling, role-playing, and performance feedback. Social Skills Training has been successful with aggressive, shy, withdrawn, and immature young people and has also been effective with youth who have intellectual or developmental disabilities.
Anger Control Training
Participants learn and practice strategies for managing and reducing anger and practicing self-control in difficult situations. The goal is to enhance self-empowerment through positive anger control methods. This enables young people to have a variety of options in dealing with a problem rather than seeing aggression as the only option.
Moral Reasoning
ART peer groups examine and reconsider values through discussion of problem situations that involve gray areas and difficult decisions. Each group member responds to questions related to a moral dilemma presented in a scenario. Participants are exposed to the perspectives of other group members. The goal is to facilitate moral-cognitive development and to help the participants see the value of fairness, justice, and concern for the needs and rights of others.