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\u2019s Greentree Village in Bald Eagle. The Daily Herald visited Greentree Village and what we saw was progress.
\nPrior 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.
\nCurrently 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.
\n\u201cI think the first few weeks here were very stressful,\u201d said Betty Sleighton, director of Greentree Village. \u201cA lot of the kids didn\u2019t respond to the authority. They didn\u2019t 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.\u201d
\nSince 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.
\nGreentree provides a chance for kids who are better served outside the traditional classroom setting.
\nIn the first couple weeks of the program, there were some issues to be dealt with.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t think the schooling was a major problem for some of these kids,\u201d said Sleighton. \u201cWe have a counselor who sits in the classes. I don\u2019t think that the school was as much of the problem as they didn\u2019t want to deal with the therapy component which is held in the afternoon. The kids didn\u2019t want to talk about their issues. They didn\u2019t 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\u2019t 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\u2019t work here.\u201d
\nThis 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 \u201cacting out\u201d behavior and 16.6 percent thought about or tried suicide.
\nThe first six months of treatment is the key towards success.
\nAccording 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.
\nThree months have gone by since the opening of Greentree Village, and The Daily Herald asked Sleighton if they see progress?
\n\u201cThere is a big change already,\u201d said Sleighton. \u201cThese 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\u2019t going to get away with this type of behavior.
\n\u201cThere are a lot of kids here who are really sick,\u201d Sleighton added. \u201cIt 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\u2019t get like this overnight and you can\u2019t cure things overnight.\u201d
\nBeing a partial-day treatment facility adds some obstacles, but parental support helps overcome the obstacles.
\n\u201cI think some of the parents are being helpful,\u201d said Sleighton. \u201cWe have had a very positive impact on the parents. \u201cWe 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\u2019re getting support from them. If a child gets a detention, we call the parents and they say, \u2018good, I am real glad you are doing that.\u2019 We have suspended kids for a day or two. I see parents being more supportive.\u201d
\nThe program for the Tyrone students at Greentree Village is structured from the moment they enter the facility until the second they leave.
\nThey 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.
\nIn this line of work, the littlest sign of progress makes you keep coming back.
\n\u201cWe went to get furniture today (Thursday) and one of the kids wanted to ride along, so we took him,\u201d said Sleighton. \u201cHe 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.\u201d
\nSleighton is encouraged that the parents are starting to get involved.
\n\u201cA lot of parents had a lack of knowledge of what to do,\u201d said Sleighton. \u201cThey 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\u2019re 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\u2019re not getting families that are saying we\u2019re not going to get involved. They\u2019ve 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\u2019re going to be in detention. We call parents and say so and so isn\u2019t doing their homework and they say they didn\u2019t know they had it, and it is done the next night.\u201d
\nImprovement is marked by small steps. In Monday\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u2019s Greentree Village in Bald Eagle. The Daily Herald visited Greentree Village and what we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47818\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}