You have read about the discussion that has gone on at Snyder Township Supervisors meetings, Tyrone School Board meetings and a town hall meeting at the Bald Eagle Fire Company. You have read about the people who are against Pyramid Healthcare’s Greentree Village in Bald Eagle. The Daily Herald visited Greentree Village and what we saw was progress.
Prior to the scheduled meeting of the Tyrone Schools Board of Directors on Tuesday night, Pyramid CEO Jon Wolf, COO Jim Vernarsky and Director of Education John Dibert made a presentation to the board and the 20 people in attendance for the meeting.
Currently Greentree Village serves 20 boys between the ages of 12 and 18 years old. After one nine weeks, there is progress, but it has been slow.
“I think the first few weeks here were very stressful,” said Betty Sleighton, director of Greentree Village. “A lot of the kids didn’t respond to the authority. They didn’t understand the need to follow rules, so it was pretty chaotic. Once we started to be more consistent with the rules, establish a trust level with the kids, things began to fall into place.”
Since the opening of Greentree Village on August 26, Pyramid has had the opportunity to provide educational and therapeutic services for 23 Tyrone students. Two students removed themselves from the program, one student went to a higher level of care and 20 are currently attending the program.
Greentree provides a chance for kids who are better served outside the traditional classroom setting.
In the first couple weeks of the program, there were some issues to be dealt with.
“I don’t think the schooling was a major problem for some of these kids,” said Sleighton. “We have a counselor who sits in the classes. I don’t think that the school was as much of the problem as they didn’t want to deal with the therapy component which is held in the afternoon. The kids didn’t want to talk about their issues. They didn’t want to get in touch with their feelings. So it took a lot of convincing to establish the sense of trust from the kids to know it was ok to talk about what was going on with them, why they were acting the way they were acting, and what may be going on at home that may be influencing their behavior. I think now we are just beginning to see some progress. They are talking about therapy, they are trusting their therapists now. They are responding to a lot of nurturing that they are given. Kids that were acting out now are becoming positive members of what we call our community. I think the fact that these kids didn’t have the structure and were used to doing what they wanted to do. If they wanted to intimidate other people so that they could run the show, and that doesn’t work here.”
This is a problem that is not only in the Tyrone School District. According to the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration 2001 National Household Survey, 4.3 million adolescents (18.4 percent of the population) between 12 and 17 received counseling for emotional or behavioral problems. Of that 4.3 million, 44.9 percent felt depressed, 22.4 percent displayed “acting out” behavior and 16.6 percent thought about or tried suicide.
The first six months of treatment is the key towards success.
According to the 1999 annual report to Congress on evaluation of Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children and Their Families Program showed the biggest increase of improvement in the first six months of treatment.
Three months have gone by since the opening of Greentree Village, and The Daily Herald asked Sleighton if they see progress?
“There is a big change already,” said Sleighton. “These kids came in here and every other word out of their mouth was a swear word. We give consequences for that. We had to get basically be the parents to these kids and say no, you are not allowed to do this. This is what is going to happen if you are going to do this. You have to be consistent and they learn that they aren’t going to get away with this type of behavior.
“There are a lot of kids here who are really sick,” Sleighton added. “It takes a lot of individual time with these kids for them to make progress. Some of these kids are not going to make progress in the next three months. It is going to take a while because they didn’t get like this overnight and you can’t cure things overnight.”
Being a partial-day treatment facility adds some obstacles, but parental support helps overcome the obstacles.
“I think some of the parents are being helpful,” said Sleighton. “We have had a very positive impact on the parents. “We have had more parents calling us and saying this has happened, it needs to be addressed. If the kids get in trouble here, we call the parents. We’re getting support from them. If a child gets a detention, we call the parents and they say, ‘good, I am real glad you are doing that.’ We have suspended kids for a day or two. I see parents being more supportive.”
The program for the Tyrone students at Greentree Village is structured from the moment they enter the facility until the second they leave.
They are served breakfast at 8 a.m., have a community meeting at 8:45 a.m., four classes in the morning, lunch, do chores around the facility, then have group and experiential therapy in the afternoon.
In this line of work, the littlest sign of progress makes you keep coming back.
“We went to get furniture today (Thursday) and one of the kids wanted to ride along, so we took him,” said Sleighton. “He was so thrilled. You could tell he has never really been in a social situation. He got to see a family, we took him out to lunch and he was just thrilled. I am going to bring him to my house for Thanksgiving if you are maintaining. The boy was thrilled and is working to make sure that trip comes about.”
Sleighton is encouraged that the parents are starting to get involved.
“A lot of parents had a lack of knowledge of what to do,” said Sleighton. “They feel helpless. They feel hopeless. They feel that nothing can change. They have nobody to turn to. We can help them help their child. We’re listening to the parents as well as the kids. We put a letter out asking if they would like to start a parents support group. We have families coming in for family sessions. We are seeing progress. We’re not getting families that are saying we’re not going to get involved. They’ve been pretty receptive to what we are doing. We mail out weekly grades to the parents and keep them informed of what we are doing. We tie in our level system. They have to have a passing grade, they have to be doing their homework. If they are not doing their homework, they’re going to be in detention. We call parents and say so and so isn’t doing their homework and they say they didn’t know they had it, and it is done the next night.”
Improvement is marked by small steps. In Monday’s Daily Herald, Activities Therapist Eric Rally will talk about some of the activities that the kids are going through and a overview of the education progress the students are making.
