The James House Residential Treatment Centre provides a short-term therapeutic intervention (4 months) in two gender-specific centres each with eight adolescents who have emotional, psychological, and behavioural difficulties.
Giving young men and women the tools to succeed
At the heart of the programme is the integration of on-going and pre-determined therapeutic services for boys and girls who display characteristics and behaviours that are extremely difficult to manage, and are placed in our care by the courts.
The programme is defined by a holistic, multi-systemic approach to help the children overcome trauma, to create awareness of positive alternatives to dealing with challenges, and a desire to embrace these alternatives.
In keeping with the provisions of the new Children’s Act and international standards for residential care, we have transformed our generic Residential Programme into a highly specialised therapeutic programme.
Did You Know?
The James House Residential Treatment Centre is a pilot project which we implement in partnership with the Department of Social Development and will be the first of its kind in South Africa. DSD selected and entrusted James House yet again to develop and implement a pilot programme on its behalf.
A Therapeutic Environment
At James House we recognise that disrupted attachment and bonding, social, emotional and cognitive deprivation, disrupted family relationships and trauma are common ingredients that contribute to individual struggle to achieve balance followed by personal achievement.
A milieu offering skilled emotional and social care in order to promote healthy relationships is a basic step in the productive direction of healing as a prelude to positive functioning.
A New Approach
Our Residential Treatment Centre distinguishes itself in its special focus on a strong and cohesive therapeutic team. Our highly experienced clinical psychologist, the social worker, child care workers and in-house teacher together facilitate an on-going therapeutic process with the children.
The psychologist also facilitates regular, predetermined clinical interventions for the group and the individual boys. This means that instead of the children attending therapy, the programme as a whole is therapy. Our full-time teacher offers an in- house educational programme for those boys who first need to stabilise before it is in their best interest to go back to mainstream schooling.
Healing Families
The team will make every effort to support and work closely with each child’s family – the primary goal always being the reunification of the child with his family.
The boys’ behaviour is often the result of dysfunctional dynamics at home, which in turn is the result of unresolved trauma in the lives of parents, who are themselves in need of healing. To this end, parents receive support in the form of counselling and parenting skills workshops.