To the family: HEC believes strongly in the practices of the Building Bridges Initiative. This means that your treatment will be based on your strengths and the strengths of your family. It also means that we will be looking to you and your family to guide your treatment in every way. We will be working with you and your family, utilizing strict standards for ensuring that you have timely and individualized treatment plan meetings and documents. Your opinions, ideas, wants, and needs are very important in this process. We want treatment to be something you find useful and something you believe will help you reach your goals for your life.

To the youth: You will be encouraged to participate in all parts of your treatment planning and to attend your treatment plan meetings. In preparing for treatment planning meetings you can help make a list of agenda items, work with staff to set up for the meeting, greet people as they arrive and even lead the meeting if you are comfortable with it. Your clinician and staff will help you with this preparation. You will have regular treatment planning meetings with staff and your family to talk about your goals and objectives, to identify which skills you think are working and which ones are not, and your plan will be adjusted to match these discussions. In addition to having your family at your meetings, you will have the opportunity to tell us which community resources and HEC staff you would like to attend your meetings with you.

To the youth & family: Throughout the treatment process, you will be asked about how well you think interventions and skills are working. We will offer a wide variety of skills and techniques based on your input, because we know not all skills and techniques work for everyone. Our goal is to help you figure out which ones work for you. We want you to leave our program feeling like you have skills and techniques that will work for you wherever you go. To that end, we won’t just be practicing these skills with you in therapy. We will be practicing them with you in school, in the dorm, in your home, and in your community. That way you can have a really good sense of which skills you want to keep in your “toolbox”. We will also be looking to you to identify specific life goals for the near and distant future and ask you to participate in important searches for resources, tours of schools and/or treatment provider locations, meetings, and interviews as you prepare to move on from our program. If you find it hard to speak up for yourself, we will work with you to find the best way to communicate your wants and needs for your treatment.