Youth Homes

The Susan Talbot Home for Girls

Program Definition
The Susan Talbot Home for Girls is a five bed intensive level therapeutic group home serving adolescent girls, ages 11 to 17. The program is eligible for Medicaid funding and requires room & board payments.

Beliefs
We believe that our efforts to assist children in making positive change are best built on relationship. The ability to trust is essential to human health. Tenants of our program include that everyone will all be safe in our homes, staff are in charge and residents have come to us to make positive change in their lives. Our program has three strong, interwoven components that are all delivered by the staff – those being behavior, insight and relationship.

We employ a structured behavioral system, using graduated privileges as an external motivator, which means the staff intervenes on behaviors to discourage undesirable ones and to teach and reward positive ones. The better a youth does the more power that youth can exercise. We assess children on what we see them doing more than what they claim they are doing.

Therapy is built on a stable and consistent structure focused on assisting the young person in developing insight and acceptance. Most of the youth we serve have been badly hurt by the very people that should have protected them, resulting in fear of the care and control of adults, which translates into many problems. Often their lives have been chaotic. Our program offers them a clear, predictable, reliable script for control of their experiences. The catch for them is that they must work through the staff in order to exercise the control they desire, i.e. they have to learn that they can trust us in order to gain control.

The interpersonal component of the program is as important as the behavioral and neither would be as effective without the other. We teach relationship skills while we model them.

Location
The home is located in a residential neighborhood in the Target Range area, near Fort Missoula, and west of the urban area of Missoula. The home is close to Big Sky High School but the girls attend the school they attended prior to placement and are transported there by staff. While a country setting, the home and resources make it possible for the girls to easily participate in community activities, school functions and access retail and services as needed. The home has two floors with single bedrooms for each girl on the lower level and large, open living areas and program staff offices on the main floor. The home is situated among other private homes with similar one acre lots.

Target Population
The program specializes in the treatment and supervision of girls with severe emotional problems stemming from a history of abuse, neglect or exploitation and who are experiencing severe emotional problems including disorders of relationship, conduct, mood and trauma. Many of the girls we serve are victims of domestic violence, physical and sexual abuse and neglect. Many of the girls are failing in school, have acted out their issues in minor delinquencies or other anti-social behaviors, present as impulsive and oppositional or have directed their frustration inward and have low self-esteem and may be suicidal in thought.

Criteria for Admission
The Susan Talbot Home for Girls is an intensive level, Medicaid therapeutic living group home designed to serve and treat adolescent youth who at application are:

1. girls ages 12 to 18
2. diagnosed as seriously emotionally disturbed, under Montana Law and within current Medicaid rules
3. “emotionally disturbed” by definition in the current DSM and by evaluation or assessment of a “mental health professional”
4. with a payer willing to place and pay for the youth’s treatment and care
5. with health insurance coverage arranged and in place;
6. able to comprehend a program of treatment that requires abstract thinking with a full scale I.Q. of 85 on a WISC instrument;
7. at a limited potential for success at a lower level of care and treatment
8. appropriate to placement at this home by virtue of

a. current behavior
b. presenting emotional issues
c. determination of acceptability by the admissions committee as appointed by the Youth Homes

9. Our program is specifically aimed at serving but not exclusively reserved for girls who are:

a. experiencing severe emotional problems including disorders of relationship, conduct, mood and trauma
b. victims of domestic violence, physical and sexual abuse and neglect
c. acting out their issues in minor delinquencies or other anti-social behaviors
d. impulsive and oppositional
e. directing their frustration inward
f. having very low self-esteem
g. possibly suicidal in thought
h. in our state’s public systems of care, including child protection, youth courts and behavioral health
i. local girls from western Montana.

10. Girls may be deemed inappropriate to care in and treatment by the Susan Talbot Home for Girls include those who are:

a. diagnosed as suffering from a psychotic illness;
b. too detached or withdrawn who cannot form any meaningful relationships so that supervision and guidance are ineffective
c. presenting an immediate physical threats to others
d. Presenting a more compelling need for supervision than treatment
e. too disruptive in style to be able to live within a group living arrangement/setting

Application
People interested in placing an adolescent at our Susan Talbot Home for Girls are encouraged to call either of our contact persons first to discuss the appropriateness of and details involved in any placement. We do require a written application which can be downloaded here. The completed application can be delivered, mailed or emailed. The application will be reviewed and presented to our Admissions Committee within 2 weeks in most cases. We may need additional information to make any final determination. Our staff will contact the referring person or persons within 24 hours of a decision.

Staffing Design

1. Staff is well qualified to serve our clients, not just by their college degrees, but even more so by their personal talents. Our staff is warm, calm, likable, energetic, strong, courageous, purposeful, interested, dedicated, hard working and respectful.
2. Staff has different roles but all are practiced in our program philosophy.
3. Staff is comprised of youth care workers; youth care relief workers, home managers and treatment or clinical staff.
4. Staff works in teams, from the team of two youth care workers on each shift who staff the homes in the afternoon, evening or weekend, with youth care overnight workers and the teams of therapist, primary youth care worker and folks outside Youth Homes involved in an individual youth's case, to the entire staff of the facility that meets weekly to refine our service delivery and address individual case needs.
5. Staff is the people who hold the hands of these kids while we ask them to take a leap of faith so that their lives can be better. It is a tremendous responsibility.
6. Youth care workers are working with 1:3 ratios of staff to kids. They are relieved for annual and other leave by youth care relief workers who are only employed to this single group home.
7. The program has a full time home manager who oversees the daily functioning in the home, from food to maintenance.
8. The home is run by a director who also serves as a therapist and we have another full time therapist. These two staff members work in both this home and the Talbot Home for Girls.

Program Structure
The staff creates a comfortable, home-like environment in a neighborhood setting, where we can assess each adolescent’s individual needs and create a treatment plan that will help the youth learn life skills, gain valuable insight, address emotional issues, and become a healthy and functional member of their community. Personal responsibility and empowerment are goals for every youngster we serve. At the Susan Talbot Boys and Girls Home, youth receive:

• safe, stable and creative environment with a 1:3 staff to child ratio with 24 hour awake supervision.
• group and individual therapy sessions where we formalize some of this therapeutic process. We are looking to lead these youth to recognizing that what they are doing that is causing them problems, why they have attached themselves to such dysfunctional behavior patterns and the development and stabilization of functional behavior patterns in the context of each youth's life.
• individual, group and family therapy focusing on developing healthy insight, relationship and emotional skills.
• a structured daily program with a privilege system that teaches social skills and behavior management.
• a physical fitness program to improve cardiovascular health and general fitness so that participation in fitness activities will be a positive experience and a life-long skill.
• access to community services, including public schools, health care, recreation, and the arts
• coordination with other social and treatment services and agencies.
• focus on cultural identity development. Each youth is given a multi-ethnic identity assessment and individual goals are added to their treatment plans.