Key Point Academy
Latest News on Our Work with Troubled Teens
Kudos from The Pros
InsightPros Accepts Key Point As a Strong Model Program
InsightPros, an organization that provides seminars and training to parents, educators, and therapists throughout the country based upon its proprietary Strong Model of Interaction and Intervention, has accepted Key Point Academy as a top quality program, which they openly showcase to their audiences. Key Point's drive to continually strengthen its program is enhanced by Strong Model training, and the effects are pronounced. From the staff to the students and their families, a shift that is destined to change lives forever is taking place.
The Strong Model, as taught by InsightPros, pulls effective treatment theory out of text books, and puts it into practice. More importantly, it helps staff, students, therapists, and parents recognize not only what should be done to help fix a broken life, but how it should be done. A deeper level of commitment is being seen at all levels of the organization.
Our students understand that mere obedience to rules isn't enough - that simple, temporary compliance to the will of others won't save them from their weaknesses. They are becoming committed to value-based living, and they are accepting their roles as the most critical members of their treatment teams, as far as long-term solutions to their problems are concerned.
Our staff are clearly seeing their role as facilitators of the students' success, rather than domineering overseers. They are extensions of the therapeutic process, and recognize that every interaction with students, when there is no conflict or crisis, counts - that every step taken when there is conflict or crisis is critical. But the "why and how" of those steps and interactions is what's so exciting. Our staff are recognizing that as they guide, inspire, and empower the peer groups to help the individuals, long-term commitment to change is occuring.
The mood and feel of the campus is electric. Unlike most treatment programs, there is actually a day-to-day, moment-to-moment sensation that what is happening among our students, and even in the lives of those working with the students, is something exciting and uncommon. The strengths of everyone, both staff and student, are being brought into focus. This is not a tedious labor. It's the discovery of strength. We look forward to a long and dynamic relationship with InsightPros and the Strong Model of Interaction and Intervention.
Key Alliances
How Key Point Works with Local Therapy and Short-Term Programs
Most parents and therapists don't realize that a multi-million dollar marketing machine serving private residential treatment centers hovers over their communities. The goal of this machine is to pluck troubled teens out of their homes when their issues are serious enough that parents have sought help, yet before local therapists can be employed to help avert or minimize the financial and emotional costs of residential placement. This process sees local therapists as potential "wrenches in the machine." Key Point Academy does NOT support this processs.
Instead, Key Point has employed a multi-faceted approach to empower both the family and the local professional community to be both the first and the last line of defense and intervention with troubled teens.
Educating the Market: Key Point supports the efforts of InsightPros to provide intervention strategies and concepts directly to local communities. We make no direct profit from this process, but instead receive the assurance that if some of the parents who take the training end up having students in our school, those parents are already familiar with the therapeutic and intervention process we employ. They understand concepts of Positive Peer Culture, and are familiar with the effectiveness of the Strong Model of Interaction and Intervention. The clear goal for the parents is to either avert placement, or to be increasingly prepared to work with their children after residential placement takes place.
InsightPros and Therapists: InsightPros actively invites local therapists to its seminars, both to help them understand the Strong Model, and to provide local therapeutic resources to parents who are considering residential placement for their troubled teens. The goal is to develop a local community of therapists who completely understand not only the residential treatment care industry, but who can both recommend for and against placement. These therapists are provided with information on the predatory nature of many residential programs' marketing efforts, which seek to exclude early intervention by local therapists. On the other hand, they are provided with an understanding of the very real and appropriate benefit of residential treatment services when they're warranted.
Key Point and Therapists: Key Point Academy includes as part of its program payment of $1,000 for up to two months of aftercare with a licensed therapist after students return home. The goal is to ensure a strong therapeutic transition back to the home and local community. The best therapists to engage in this process, from our perspective, are those who have had the longest exposure to the family and our treatment practices. Our involvement with InsightPros helps in this process. However, we are willing to help families work with therapists throughout the country, even if InsightPros does not have a local presence.
Short-Term Alliance: Key Point works with a short-term program called White Rock Academy to provide long-term services when warranted. Key Point believes that the sooner a child can re-integrate into the home environment the better. White Rock also practices both Positive Peer Culture and the Strong Model of Interaction and Intervention. By making ourselves available to White Rock we have sought to make our services available to parents who want to try short-term first, but ultimately feel a longer-term approach with their child is necessary. Because our theories of change and treatment processes complement one another, the transition from one program to the next is as seamless as possible. But there is another benefit .....
Both White Rock Academy and Key Point offer to pay for two months of aftercare with a local therapist (up to $500 per month, per program). Parents who start with White Rock Academy (in Kansas), and end up finishing their child's residential care with Key Point (in Utah), will have an aftercare credit totalling $2,000 for up to four months of support from a local therapist.
The First Line, and The Last: In summary, Key Point Academy is doing as much as it can to make sure that real progress toward long-term solutions for troubled teens begins at home, even before residential treatment begins. As the support group in the home environment develops the skills necessary for the ultimate return of the child, the home then becomes the final, critical line of defense, where long-term solutions will need to be realized by the child.
Our alliance, therefore, is a team comprised of family, therapists, ourselves, and others, keeping in the forefront of our minds the fact that we must help the child choose to succeed. That final choice, put into action by a child who has discovered true strength, makes all of the financial, personal, and professional effort worth it.