Our ApproachVideos
Crossroads |
Therapy
Three important components of our model of change include:
Individual Therapy: Your son will receive much more than the traditional one hour a week session with his therapist. Due to our smaller caseloads (8 students) and being a small school, we will be able to really get to know your child and establish a great relationship of trust with him. We, Derek and Sam, are both the owners/co-founders of Crossroads Academy and are also two of the therapists at the school. We believe a strong relationship with your son is key, and as such, we will spend many hours a week participating in the recreation aspect of the program with your child. We will also go on regular weekend excursions with the students, which will allow us to experience your son in many different settings. Typical weekly individual sessions will be spent outside of our offices going for walks, taking drives up the beautiful canyons, going to lunch, fishing, sitting on top of the skate ramp, and in many other locations. Students will also come to our homes for barbeques and game nights. Again, we view this strong relationship with your son as imperative to facilitating a lasting change, and these are just some of the ways that we will get to know your son and build the positive relationship of trust with him. Family Therapy: We believe that your son’s personal growth and recovery will be greatly enhanced through the strong family component of our school. Families will receive weekly family therapy sessions over the phone and sessions in person, whenever the parents come out for a visit. These family therapy sessions will focus on better communication, parenting skills, vulnerable conversations between parents and sons, goal setting, etc. Outside of the family therapy call, you will communicate with your son through an additional weekend call, as well as letters and email. We expect parents to participate in family workshops a couple of times a year. Parents will have reading assignments and participate in family, couple, or group therapy at home. Al-Anon meetings can be a helpful resource that we encourage as well. Group Therapy: With the many years of experience you have had raising your son, we are sure you have become very aware of the powerful influence that peers can have in the life of a teenager, and in your son’s case—the powerful negative influence that his peers have had on him. Group therapy is an excellent tool for turning a peer group into a powerful positive influence in your son’s life. Our goal is to empower each child to have a voice and a place where they can all feel emotionally safe to be vulnerable with one another. In group therapy, each boy will have opportunities to share his stories and experiences with peers who can often relate to the things he has been going through and who are able to offer him acceptance and support. These daily groups will be led by Sam and Derek, as well as our substance abuse counselors. Substance Abuse/Recovery Work: Here at Crossroads Academy, we will not manipulate your son into telling us what we want to hear. Instead, we will give him the opportunity to experience the happiness that comes from success in the different program domains, thus lighting a fire of lasting change that will come from within. In addition to the substance abuse work being done in individual, family, and group therapy, your son will also receive three hours each week of chemical dependency (CD) work with our substance abuse counselors. We do not believe in a cookie cutter approach in dealing with the students at Crossroads. Each of the adolescents in this program is a diverse individual, and because of this, a certain approach may work better for one student, while a different approach may be needed for another. Our CD counselors will have your son work through different models depending on your son’s individual needs. We start all of our students with the Seven Challenges Model. A relapse prevention plan will be formulated before your child graduates from our program. Every facet of the program at Crossroads Academy is geared toward helping your son replace his previous addictive and unhealthy behaviors with a healthy and productive lifestyle. As your son experiences success in all three of our program’s domains: Therapy, Academics, and Recreation, we believe that he will begin gaining direction and purpose in his life. He will be getting back in touch with some core values through the influence of the program’s four guiding principles: Family, Integrity, Work, and Play. It is our hope that at the end of your son’s stay at Crossroads, he will determine on his own that the fulfillment of having healthy relationships with family and friends, the confidence and self-esteem that comes from having integrity and a strong work ethic, and the enjoyment and self-confidence that can result from wholesome recreation, free of mind-altering substances, will all out-way the temporary pleasures he experienced with his past drug-using lifestyle. Summary:
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