What is Therapeutic Mentoring?
Therapeutic Mentoring offers structured, one-to-one, strength-based support services between a therapeutic mentor and a youth (up to the age of 21) for the purpose of addressing communication, daily living, and social needs.
Services are provided in any setting where the youth resides, such as the home (including foster homes and therapeutic foster homes), and in other community settings such as school, child care centers, respite settings, and other culturally and linguistically appropriate community settings.
What is a Therapeutic Mentor?
How It Works
We believe in the highest level of care for youth that ends with positive changes in their behavior, attitude, and overall character development. Progressive Community Outreach mentors youth by being committed to the Core Principles of Strength-Based Practice. We believe wholeheartedly that change is inevitable – all individuals have the urge to succeed, to explore the world around them and to make themselves useful to others and their communities. What we focus on becomes one’s reality – focus on strength, not labels – seeing challenges as areas for growth and opportunity. Our therapeutic mentoring services build upon strengths, not weakness and assist all youth to become the change we want to see.
Therapeutic Mentoring services include, but are not limited to :
Therapeutic Mentoring offers structured, one-to-one, strength-based support services between a therapeutic mentor and a youth (up to the age of 21) for the purpose of addressing communication, daily living, and social needs.
Services are provided in any setting where the youth resides, such as the home (including foster homes and therapeutic foster homes), and in other community settings such as school, child care centers, respite settings, and other culturally and linguistically appropriate community settings.
What is a Therapeutic Mentor?
- Therapeutic mentors are positive adult role models who assist youth to find nurture and exercise their strengths. They seek to increase youths' positive social behavior, decrease their involvement with the legal system and to help youth become more interested, connected and responsible members of their communities.
- Therapeutic mentoring requires an awareness of factors within the individual, family, school and community that contribute to behaviors. Extensive research defines resiliency as the ability to thrive when faced with unpromising situations, and identifies protective factors within the individual, family, school and community. Such factors are proven to reduce the effects of exposure to life difficulties that are associated with delinquency, substance abuse, school dropout, and violence.
- Therapeutic mentors enhance resiliency through understanding individual and community strengths, and by helping to create positive community support networks.
- Therapeutic Mentors are selected based on their ability to connect with and provide positive role modeling and direction for youth, thereby creating a bridge between young people and their communities. The program serves children, adolescents and young parents in need of additional home and/or community supports.
How It Works
We believe in the highest level of care for youth that ends with positive changes in their behavior, attitude, and overall character development. Progressive Community Outreach mentors youth by being committed to the Core Principles of Strength-Based Practice. We believe wholeheartedly that change is inevitable – all individuals have the urge to succeed, to explore the world around them and to make themselves useful to others and their communities. What we focus on becomes one’s reality – focus on strength, not labels – seeing challenges as areas for growth and opportunity. Our therapeutic mentoring services build upon strengths, not weakness and assist all youth to become the change we want to see.
Therapeutic Mentoring services include, but are not limited to :
- Coaching, supporting and training the youth in age-appropriate behaviors
- Interpersonal communication, conflict resolution, problem-solving
- Relating appropriately to other children, adolescents, and adults, in recreational and social activities
- Ongoing monitoring, including motivational interviewing
- Pyschosocial skill training (communication, problem solving, relapse prevention, anger management, etc.
- Relationship skill‐building and support between adolescent and caregiver
- Providing/facilitating linkages to community‐based recovery supports and activities to promote wellness
- Transporting youth to needed services
- Assisting the youth to develop coping and problem‐solving strategies to improve self‐management Contacting youth in‐person and by phone to offer support and assistance and to encourage and support engagement in mutual support groups and other mental health/recovery services
- Organizing structured leisure and recreational activities – based on participants’ preferences – in order to provide opportunities for participants to practice social and coping skills
- Assisting in the development, review and updating of Wellness/Recovery Action Plans
- Assisting in identifying needed services and supports to sustain recovery and work with individuals in navigating social service systems
- Acting as advocate/liaison when necessary at court hearings, child welfare, environments that might invoke trauma reactions, etc.