Welcome to the first episode of Becoming Centered.  This episode begins the Residential Counselor Orientation series, designed for the new Residential Counselor.  It introduces a way to understand your role, your relationship with clients and other counselors, and introduces some basic tools for becoming a skilled Residential Counselor. 

Episode 1 focuses on a specific understanding of the role of a Residential Counselor.  For related resources check out the Bear Clan, llc website at www.BearClanllc.com.    

There’s different types of residential treatment programs for serving school-age children.  The length of treatment and the setting can greatly vary.  

The extent to which residential treatment is a therapeutic and transformational experience will greatly depend on the quality of the relationships formed between residential staff and the clients.

Staying in a professional role can be challenging for a variety of reasons.  However, that’s the ideal for which to strive.

“Counseling” can be thought of as helping people improve their ability to become centered.

It’s helpful to understand the brain and personal psychology in terms of four domains of functioning:

1. Emotions
2. Cognitions
3. Behaviors
4. Executive Skills

Possible areas on which to focus during your orientation period include:

• ·       Assist clients with becoming emotionally centered by presenting yourself in a calm and organized fashion.  It’s okay if that feels like you’re just acting; give yourself time to grow into this complex role.
• ·       Assist clients with becoming cognitively centered by learning the daily schedule and helping clients be organized and prepared for the tasks associated with the different parts of the schedule.
• ·         Assist clients with becoming behaviorally centered by attending to their basic physical needs for hydration, food, rest, sleep, exercise, etc.  Also take care to attend to your own basic needs so that you’re able to function at a high level despite the difficult hours of your work day.  Help clients learn to co-regulate their nervous system with yours by playing with them and having fun with them.
• ·         Assist clients with their developing executive skills by supporting their self-regulation of their own emotions, cognitions, and behaviors.  Asking clients what comes next in the schedule and what preparation is needed, is a simple way to get them to think ahead and practice their executive skills.

Professional boundaries includes:

1.         the schedule of when you’ll have contact with the kids,

2.         limits on physical touch,

3.         limits on personal disclosure, and

4.         the general tone of the professional relationship.

1.  Your contact with clients is during scheduled hours.

•         Be polite but minimize any accidental contact with clients outside of work.
•          Don’t talk about your clients in public.

2.  Limits on physical touch.

•          Providing Physical Assistance:  If your clients require physical assistance with hygiene, always be business-like and clinical.
•          Affectionate Touch:  Kids thrive on affectionate touch but because of the treatment issues common in residential programs your organization likely has guidelines to avoid types of affectionate touch that are too intimate.
•          Sexualized Touch:  Sexualized behaviors toward clients is clearly a boundary violation.  You may have to set limits on sexualized clients trying to relate to you in a sexualized or harassing fashion.
•          Directive Touch:  If your clients require physical assistance with hygiene, always be business-like and clinical.  Only use directive touch in a manner consistent with your organization’s trainings, policies, procedures, and practices.

3.  Limits on personal disclosure.

•          Your relationships with the kids are based on the time you spend together, not on your personal history, your life outside of work, or the type of information you might exchange with peers in order to develop a relationship.
•          Kids will test to see if you have professional personal disclosure boundaries, so have in mind some respectful ways to not answer questions about your life outside of work.
•          Don’t disclose personal issues that overlap with issues that the kids bring into treatment, such as drug use, unless your program directly trains and supports you in how to use that sort of disclosure in a therapeutic way.

4.  The general tone of the professional relationship.

•          Dress like a professional.  Speak like a professional.  Carry yourself in a confident fashion.
•          Don’t promise to keep any secrets.  You’re part of a treatment team and may be professionally obligated to share any information you learn from a client.
•          Allow yourself to develop genuine caring feelings for the kids, but maintain a level of clinical distance to create an important professional emotional boundary.

Therapeutic relationships help your clients become centered in four domains of psychological functioning.  This can be visualized using The Domain Compass:

·       In the East, there’s the domain of emotions, consisting of feeling and moods.

·       In the South, there’s the domain of cognitions, consisting of thoughts and beliefs.

·       In the West, there’s the domain of behaviors, consisting of both all external actions and the internal actions of the physical body.

·       In the North, there’s the domain of executive skills and self-regulation. 

1.  Three relationship qualities to strive for within the domain of emotions.

·         Focus on increasing clients’ awareness of their own emotions.

o   The Check-In technique helps clients express their feelings and moods in words or in various kinds of rating scales.

·         Help sooth emotions that become too powerful or chaotic.

o   The Low and Slow approach helps to cool down an overheating nervous system.

o   The Organized Activities approach helps to structure a chaotic nervous system.

·         Build up clients’ fragile and/or low self-esteem.

o   Praise works through high frequency repetition to help kids see their own strengths and worth.

o   Attention helps kids feel their own worth.  Often times, older kids in residential treatment still need the intense level of attention that people appear to intuitively give to pre-schoolers.

2.  Two relationship qualities that help kids within the domain of cognitions.

·         Increase external structures to reduce cognitive chaos.

·         Break sequences down into smaller chunks.

3.  Three relationship qualities that help kids become behaviorally and physiologically centered.

·         Attend to kids’ basic physiological needs (water, food, sleep, exercise, rest).

·         Become an active and skilled listener.

·         Co-regulate with kids through joining them in play.

4.  One key relationship quality that helps kids in the domain of executive skills.

·         Help each kid make and keep friends.