Educational Transition Support Project - Our Program

The Educational Transition Support Project (ETSP) works with families, schools, and community service agencies helping children return from residential psychiatric treatment centers (RPTC). ETSP has found several factors that enhance a successful outcome.
Things that work are:
Making decisions together:
The understanding and commitment that comes from being part of the team can be dynamic for all involved in the process.
Creating clear and reasonable expectations:
We need to know what is expected of us, and that includes the student, family, school, and community.
Preparing for what might come up:
At anytime a crisis can occur in the life of a child and/or a family; how that situation is handled matters.
Building supports:
We are more likely to succeed if we are part of a bigger system.
Working together:
It is important that all individuals making up the process have a voice and a clear concept of our roles and responsibilities.
Our Procedure
Objective: Keep student in school learning
Goal I: Increase degree of student awareness of academic environment.
1) Learn rules
2) Learn procedures/protocol
3) Understand role of authority
4) Recognition of authority
5) Comprehensible expectations
Syllabus
Use of clear, concrete, predictable, and immediate consequences
Goal II: Student to meet or exceed academic expectations.
1) Supports in place
An advocate for trust, support, concern and action
Temperate guidance: understanding what is expected; when and how to act
Realistic goals, structure, and supervision with constructive feedback, both academic and social
More time, more repetitions and fewer distractions
Something to feel good about; some successes somewhere
Some friends, even older or younger, including teachers and advocates
School coordinating with parents/guardians
2) Interest-based writing, reading, math
Student requires a clear and consistent understanding of school hierarchy.
Teachers should be non-judgmental; feedback to student needs to accentuate the strengths. Find what the youth does well and acknowledge it. The youth does not want to fail in school nor does s/he want to upset the staff. S/he is sensitive to the environment and lacks certain control in managing his/her feelings. The youth acts out in order to protect her/himself. This student can learn to trust the system if the system is consistent, impartial, supportive and moderately structured.
The student wants to succeed but is afraid of failure. The youth will need to have supports in place to offset her/his limited school accomplishments.
The ETSP program is part of the Bring the Kids Home initiative, a state funded program. An individual's participation is voluntary, confidential, and free.