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How Behavioral Family Counseling is Incorporated into JRC's Treatment Program

Policy

It is the policy of JRC to offer behavioral counseling to the families of students placed at JRC.

Principles

1. JRC’s treatment and education program is based on behavior modification and includes a careful and consistent use of rewards and punishments to build appropriate behaviors and to decrease inappropriate behaviors.

2. JRC’s behavioral treatment approach seeks to identify factors in the environment that control or “cause” a student’s behavior. Some of the most important of these are the consequences that the student's behavior produces. These consequences are termed accelerating consequences if they increase the behavior’s frequency, and decelerating consequences if they decrease its frequency.

3. By identifying causes of behavior in the student’s present and past environments, behavioral treatment may differ from traditional mental health treatments that involve hypothetical inner causes (“diagnoses”) such as mental health classifications or biochemistry.

4. Two sets of environmental causes are particularly relevant to behavioral treatment:

   1. those in the treatment program environment

   2. those in the student's "natural" home environment

5. An important aim of behavioral treatment is for students to transfer their improved behavior from the treatment program environment to their natural home environments. This is known as "generalization."

6. Parents, family members, other caregivers or support persons can make important contributions to generalization. In order to do this, they must identify and control aspects of the natural home environment, including their own social interactions, that may affect behavior of the student placed in treatment.

7. The purpose of behavioral family counseling is to educate students' family members or support persons about behavioral principles and assist them in applying these to their own behavior and home environment to support generalization of improved behavior for the student who is in treatment.

8. Behavioral family counseling involves verbal interactions that describe rules, point up contingencies, provide information, encourage accurate discriminations, prompt and shape new skills, and provide social reinforcement for behaviors promoting generalization.

Behavioral Family Counseling

Each student admitted to JRC is assigned a treatment team that typically includes a case manager, behavioral clinician and other professionals. In support of the student's treatment, this team will offer behavioral family counseling to family members or other caregivers in the student's home environment. The frequency, duration and means of interaction during behavioral family counseling may vary due to such factors as distance, participants' availability and preferences.

In general, behavioral family counseling may include the following:

1. provision of information about behavioral treatment and its relation to alternative treatment approaches;

2. guidance in how to interpret JRC's various interventions and data systems;

3. guidance in how to assess progress for the student placed in treatment;

4. guidance in applying behavioral principles to understanding the origins of behavior for the student in treatment as well as future prospects;

5. assistance in identifying and changing relevant factors in the home environment;

6. assistance in identifying and changing unhelpful social interactions;

7. assistance in identifying and changing personal obstacles that may impede treatment progress or generalization for the student in treatment;

8. consultation on modifying the behavior of others in the home setting whose conduct may affect the student in treatment;

9. collaboration in identifying short- and long-term treatment objectives for the student in treatment;

10. provision of training in implementation of behavioral treatment methods where indicated;

11. assistance in setting and monitoring behavioral contracts;

12. collaboration in transitional planning;

13. collaboration in planning post-discharge follow-up supports.

Behavioral family counseling includes verbal interactions and provision of information media. Verbal interactions may take place during formal face-to-face meetings, telephone consultations or informal meetings. JRC encourages contact between family members or other caregivers and treatment team members. These contacts may be arranged on a regular schedule, or an as-needed or ad-hoc basis. All meetings, interactions and provision of information should occur in support of promoting generalization of improved behavior for the student in treatment. JRC treatment teams, in collaboration with family members, will jointly determine what schedules and formats for behavioral family counseling are most appropriate.

Behavioral Family Counseling and Parent Training

Parents or principle caregivers of students placed in treatment at JRC will be offered opportunities to receive specific training in applying behavioral methods to better manage the student placed in treatment when the student is on home visits or with his/her parents. Behavioral family counseling may be appropriate for some family members before they participate in formal parent training. This might be particularly true when there are differences in perspectives, between family members and the JRC treatment team, concerning the causes of a student's behavior problems and the most appropriate treatment approaches.

Student Participation in Behavioral Family Counseling

There may be circumstances in which behavioral family counseling may include both the student in treatmnet and their family members. These occasions may be designed to resolve specific problems or disagreements, provide practice in appropriate social behavior or program implementation, or represent an opportunity for joint planning.

Progress and Documentation

Behavioral family counseling is part of the services offered by JRC. Counseling contacts and progress will be documented in Parent-Agency contacts maintained in the JRC student database. These entries should identify the objectives of behavioral family counseling, interventions, progress achieved and plans for further intervention.
 

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