Unique, Consistent, and Powerful Treatment Program
Treatment of noncompliance
Noncompliance is a specific and major treatment goal for every student. Students are given a variety of demands and tasks to perform throughout the day, are rewarded immediately when they comply, and lose privileges if they refuse.
By doing this consistently each student eventually becomes increasingly cooperative with teachers, parents and other legitimate authority figures. Parents can watch the development of compliance by viewing the student’s behavior chart for noncompliance on the Parent/Agency Website.
Effective treatment of aggressive and violent behaviors
JRC is very successful in reducing or eliminating aggressive and other violent behaviors, and replacing them with more appropriate behaviors.
JRC students are given behavioral contracts in which, if they can go for a defined period of time without showing aggressive behavior, they earn a powerful reward; if they break their contract by showing aggression, they lose important privileges.
The time periods of these contracts are short to begin with and are gradually lengthened as the behavior improves.
Highly consistent Applied Behavior Analysis
At JRC the same staff members work in the residences, during transport, and in the classrooms. More importantly, the same educational and treatment systems are carried out in all of those places.
Daily charting of all behaviors
JRC staff records the behavior frequencies of all of the student’s problem behaviors that we are trying to decrease, as well as positive behaviors that we are trying to increase, on a 24/7 basis. This data is deposited daily in a charting database.
This makes possible the immediate display of behavior charts for both the clinicians and parents to see. In turn, this enables the clinician to use the behavior charts to see immediately how the student is doing and to make immediate adjustments.
As a result, the student does not go for long periods of time without making academic or behavioral progress.
Unique reward systems
JRC maintains many rewards areas to which students earn access with improved behaviors. These include:
- a Big Reward Store (amusement lounge)
- Contract Store (retail store)
- classroom reward stores (mini-lounges with TVs in the classrooms)
- internet usage in the Internet Café
- Barbecue/Reward Afternoons
- basketball teams
- one to one field trips, and
- Academic Money that can be earned to purchase items in the Contract Store
- a Movie Theater
- a Snack Bar
- a Teen Lounge
- a Hair Salon
At the residences JRC’s reward systems include: cable or satellite TV’s with digital recording systems, DVD Players, stereos, game systems, and computers.
No use of time out or isolation rooms
JRC does not use “time-out” rooms as a punishment for problem behaviors. At JRC, if a student is too disruptive to work in the normal classrooms with other students, he is transferred to a small conference room, along with his work and a teacher or aide.
The student is asked to continue his/her academic work in the conference room with the assistance of the teacher or aide. When the student’s behavior improves sufficiently and the clinical team judges it safe to return him/her to a classroom, the student resumes his/her place in the classroom.
Minimizing or eliminating restraints and takedowns
Because of the effectiveness of JRC’s treatment systems, JRC is able to eliminate or minimize the need for a number of undesirable restrictive procedures, many of which can require dangerous physical struggles to implement.
Examples are: manual restraint; mechanical restraint; isolation; physically-imposed take-downs; etc.
This can be an extremely important and valuable feature for those students who have heart or other medical conditions that require avoiding and minimizing such intrusive physical interventions.
Treatment of psychiatric and behavior problems “in-house”
JRC does not normally place a student in a psychiatric hospital simply because the student is showing extreme behavior problems. In such cases we usually treat the matter as a behavior problem that needs to be treated within JRC’s facility.
JRC is equipped to cope with a wide variety of problem issues using its internal behavior modification treatment procedures. Sometimes placement of a child in a psychiatric hospital, immediately after the child has exhibited some problem behavior(s) can have the unintended effect of rewarding the very problematic behavior(s) that caused the placement in the hospital.
However, if a student’s needs can best be met by placement in a psychiatric hospital, JRC has a good working relationship with several local hospitals.
Treatment of delinquent behaviors without calling in the police
JRC does not normally call in police or seek criminal or civil action when students commit aggressive or destructive acts. We prefer to treat these actions as inappropriate behaviors that need to be treated, and not as crimes that require criminal charges or civil penalties.