MEDICAL SERVICES

Our Medical Department is led by our Nursing Department Coordinator Director who is a licensed RN.  A Consulting Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist is on site two full days per week providing direct service to clients, participating on leadership teams and providing consultation to both clinical and direct staff members. Registered Nurses are onsite weekdays and on call 24-7 providing triage and support, as well as coordinating all community services including but not limited to dental and eye care, specialty medical appointments and all related follow up care.

Pharmacy services can respond to medication changes on a 24-hour delivery basis. Department members communicate regularly with families and actively engage clients and their families in decisions around medical and psychiatric treatment.  Assistance with arranging psychiatric and medical services after discharge is provided as a core element of treatment.

Our campus is peanut/tree-nut free, with our kitchen preparing and serving only nut-free meals and products.  Our medical department is also able to service medically fragile youth on a case by case basis.

Clinical services are provided to participants in all Harmony Hill’s programs, the intensity and frequency varying based on individual client and family needs.  An individual clinician is matched as the lead, and minimally engages in weekly individual, family and/or group therapy toward the goal of decreasing symptomology and facilitating healing. Our Clinical Director oversees master level and licensed clinicians, including senior and supervising clinicians, to ensure multi-layers of internal support and consultation.

Ongoing, structured communication with milieu counselors, teachers and the medical department provides clinicians with accurate information that in turn is communicated to families and other community participants in treatment. Formal quarterly review and documentation of progress involves the entire treatment team, including the child or adolescent and his family. Participatory quarterly external review meetings ensure compliance with standards and appropriate transitions to less restrictive treatment settings.

The Attachment, Regulation and Competency (ARC) model, developed by the Justice Resource Institute’s Trauma Center, is one that helps us deliver an integrated approach to trauma in therapy, school and the milieu.  An understanding of the impact of trauma on an individual helps guide the appropriate selection of treatment modalities and interventions, all building on strengths of the child and his family.  Understanding the families’ values, beliefs and desires further helps establish clear, measurable and achievable treatment goals.

Specific therapy approaches include but are not limited to Trauma-Focused, Cognitive-Behavioral, ARC, Victim-Reactor and Collaborative Problem Solving.  Most of our clients need help mastering executive function skills, including self-monitoring, self-checking, organization, self-management and self-regulation. Our therapy approaches, and implementation of individual plans or menus for the client in the school and dormitory settings, includes careful attention to needs related to executive function skill mastery.

Group therapy can be a powerful and empowering intervention for many children and adolescents. These group settings can help in the realization that he is not alone, and allows some to open up and share frightening experiences, maximizing potential for healing. Peer support and knowledge of shared experiences can also help some focus on making things right and can motivate the client to feel success in other areas such as school, community visits and the dormitory.

Our various groups are designed to assist children and adolescents with affect-regulation, expression of feelings, impulse management, internalization of positive coping skills, moral development, understanding substance abuse, experiences of grief and loss, increasing self-esteem, understanding stressors and self-regulation. Groups are further designed to meet the experiential learning needs of participants, and can include use of music, art and outdoor experiences including our Challenge Course, which uses physical challenges in safe and controlled settings to facilitate change.

Ongoing groups include those in the Program for Sexually Abusive Adolescents, Adventure Based Therapy, Substance Abuse Prevention, Social Skills, and Moral Development. Grief and Loss, Writing, Poetry and other therapy groups are among those offered as children and adolescents present with such needs.