Therapeutic Environment:

Journey’s Quest is designed as a Positive Peer Culture treatment center. The Positive Peer Culture intervention program (PPC) seeks to use the power of peer influence to produce positive improvements in adolescent behavior. Groups are composed of up to 16 residents who make up a team (the center shall consist of 5 teams) who live together on a unit overseen by a Milieu Manger and assistant counselors (bachelor level staff who have earned undergraduate degrees in psychology, counseling, or social work) and are regularly scheduled into a PPC groups. This will remain consistent with the DBT intervention model and shall comprise an essential part of the intervention strategy of the center. Positive Peer Cultures programs allow students to talk out their problems with one another in a neutral territory. Group meetings are structured around reporting of problems, identifying priority problems, analyzing and resolving the problem, and establishing insight.

Researchers have found that this form of intervention reduces negative contacts with residents, decreases harsh interventions, decrease delinquency, builds social and problem solving skills, and leads to effective behavioral management. The Positive Peer culture is nurturing but allows peers to confront one another in a safe effective manner, teaching residents how to successfully express needs wants and desires without engaging in manipulative and entitling behaviors. Likewise, the Positive Peer Culture allows adolescent peers to hold each other accountable and responsible for faulty cognitions and behaviors. In return the resident-student learn to accept responsibility for poor choices and accept appropriate consequences for their inappropriate actions. Positive Peer Culture groups statistically show significantly fewer absences and dropouts than comparison Gestalt groups.