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This list is not in order of importance.

1. JRC has a near-zero rejection policy and a near-zero expulsion policy. Many schools have policies that refuse admission students who are over a certain age, who have violent aggressive behaviors, who tend to run away from their placements, who have pre-existing life-threatening medical conditions; who have engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior, who have been involved in the correctional system, etc. Many programs expel students if their behaviors are too problematic. By contrast, JRC has a near-zero rejection, near-zero expulsion policy. If JRC were to be no longer available to New York parents, many students would have no programs that would accept them and they would end up in state developmental centers.

2. JRC takes students off of psychotropic medication. All too often this medication is over-prescribed and is not even effective. The student ends up spending his/her day in a drugged stupor, half asleep. Because other programs are unable to use aversives to control major problematic behaviors, other programs often have to rely, instead, on heavy doses of  psychotropic drugs, on frequent “emergency” takedowns and  on manual restraint procedures. Sometimes the side effects of these psychotropic drugs produce permanently damaging effects on the nervous system, harm the liver and kidneys, cause the child to become overweight, cause diabetes, etc.

3. JRC has the most consistent and comprehensive behavior modification system of any program. It is carried out consistently in the classrooms, on the school transportation vehicles and in the residences.

4. JRC has a powerful and varied reward program that is unequalled in any other residential program. The school has: a large arcade-type “Big Reward Store”; a reward corner in each of the classrooms for lower functioning students; several Contract Reward Stores where students can purchase items of their choice if they have made their “behavior contracts”; reward boxes of desirable items for loan or purchase in each of the classrooms for lower functioning students; field trip rewards; point rewards that can be turned in for real money, etc.

5. JRC has the ability to employ supplementary aversives in case positive-only treatment procedures prove to be insufficiently effective. Studies have shown that positive only treatment and educational procedures are effective in treating only 50% of the cases of severe problematic behaviors. If JRC is unable to successfully treat a student with its positive-only procedures, JRC can, with parental approval, see authority from a probate court to supplement JRC’s positive programming with supplemental aversives. In every case where these have been added to a student’s programs, JRC has been able to successfully treat the problem behaviors. No other program has this ability to employ supplementary aversives.

6. JRC produces dramatic and rapid changes in the problematic behaviors of its students.

7. JRC never gives up on a student. Changes in each student’s rewards, behavior targets, triggering stimuli, etc., are make continually until a combination of procedures is found that works to change the child’s behavior. The philosophy of the program is that the student is never “wrong” or “bad.” What is wrong or bad is simply the behavioral treatment procedures that the program designers have arranged so far. If JRC is not producing the behavioral results that are desired, those behavioral treatment procedures need to be changed until they do.

8. JRC has a unique educational program in which most instruction is done by means of self-instruction, through computers, using proprietary software that JRC has developed. This enables previously school-resistant students to learn for the first time. This system is not available in any other school that we are aware of.

9. JRC has a unique computerized behavior database and charting system that displays charts showing the daily, weekly, and monthly frequency of each problem behavior and of the student’s academic behaviors. These charts are available to each clinician and each teacher as an objective basis for making decisions concerning which treatments work and which do not work.

10. JRC has a parent/agency web site the enables parents to see up-to-date frequency charts of student’s behaviors from day to day as well as every other important document, report, etc. relating to their child. JRC has a completely open and transparent treatment and educational system. All records, even including the notes by clinicians, are posted on this web site for parents and agencies to see. No other program has such a policy or such a site.

11. JRC has a digital video recording/monitoring system, using the internet, that enables experienced supervisors to watch staff and students at all times. A central staff of highly trained supervisors are watching what goes on at residences, even those located 20 miles away and even at 3:00 in the morning, to make sure that staff are performing appropriately at all times. This system, which is not found in any other program, gives a level of comfort to parents, regarding protecting children against possible abuse by staff or other students that is not available in other programs. Parents are able to use the same system to view archived filmed footage to review incidents that have happened in the past and to observe what goes on at JRC without staff knowing that they are watching.

12. JRC is willing to prevent students from running away and to retrieve them and bring them back if they do. Many programs will not do this.

13.  JRC does not routinely refer students to the police or to psychiatric hospitals when major aggressive, self-abusive or property destructive problem behaviors occur. Many programs do. Instead, at JRC such behaviors are treated as further problematic behaviors to be addressed by the school’s reward/punishment system.

14.  JRC requires students to attend school each day and to cooperate with the instructions given by the teachers. Some programs are unwilling to do this.

15.  JRC intervenes to prevent teasing or assault by other students and has sufficient control over its staff to be effective in doing so.

16. JRC takes care to make its school and residences clean, beautiful and attractive places to be in by decorating and furnishing them carefully and tastefully. No institutional furniture is used.

17. JRC has a unique wellness program that teaches students how to eat and exercise healthily and helps them to stop bad habits such as smoking or using drugs.

18. JRC has a unique open visiting policy that allows parents to visit at any time, for as long as they want, with or without prior notice.

19. JRC requires both staff and students to dress and act professionally. JRC permits no socialization whatsoever between staff members and students.

20. JRC maintains a high level of communication with its parents. Parents can receive phone calls from key staff members weekly and can communicate by email with staff and students.

21. JRC is willing to send highly trained staff to assist with transporting difficult or non-compliant students to our school on the day of admission. We are able to transport students from their home, a psychiatric or detention facility or another residential program to JRC. Many programs will not do this.