Our Treatment Approach

Our approach to treatment is trauma informed, meaning we use practices, policies, and a belief system that recognizes the impact of trauma on children and prioritizes their emotional, mental, and physical safety. One way we do this is by having each of our staff is trained in TBRI and use these interventions to bring about healing in the children we serve. As well as their families.

Trust Based Relational Interventions® (TBRI®)

Trust Based Relational Intervention (TBRI)- Trust-Based Relational Interventions® (TBRI®), developed by Dr. Karyn Purvis and Dr. David Cross at the TCU Institute of Child Development, represents a trauma informed approach to addressing and healing childhood behavioral challenges. It is recognized as a powerful intervention model,

TBRI® has proven to be exceptionally effective particularly for children who have faced traumatic experiences and for whom other interventions, such as medications or cognitive-behavioral therapies, have not yielded the desired results. TBRI® is uniquely tempered by humanitarian principles, ensuring that the intervention is not only scientifically sound but also deeply compassionate. TBRI® operates on three interconnected principles:

Connecting

This principle focuses on building trust and strengthening relationships between the caregiver and the child. Connecting is crucial for
establishing a secure attachment, which forms the foundation for healing and growth.

Empowering

Empowering addresses the child’s physical and emotional needs, ensuring that they feel safe and supported in their environment. This principle recognizes that meeting basic physiological needs is essential for the child’s overall well-being and ability to regulate emotions.

Correcting

Correcting helps children learn appropriate behavioral responses and self-regulation through compassionate and consistent guidance. This principle emphasizes the importance of teaching and reinforcing positive behaviors in a supportive manner. These principles work in harmony to address the complex needs of children and youth we serve.

Brief Strategic Family Therapy (BSFT)

Brief Strategic Family Therapy (BSFT) adopts a structural family systems framework to improve a youth’s behavior problems by improving family interactions that are presumed to be directly related to the youth’s symptoms. The target population in general is children and adolescents between 8 and 17 years.

BSFT is a short-term, problem-focused intervention with an emphasis on modifying maladaptive patterns of interactions. Typical sessions last from 60 to 90 minutes, with 12–15 sessions over three months. Therapy is based on the assumption that each family has unique characteristics that emerge when family members interact and that this family “system” influences all members of the family; thus the family is viewed as a whole organism. The repetitive interactions, or ways in which family members interact and behave with regard to one another, can be either successful or unsuccessful. BSFT targets these interaction patterns that are directly related to the youth’s behavior problems and establishes a practical plan to help the family develop more effective patterns of interaction.

The three primary components of the intervention are:

Joining

Understanding resistance and engaging the family in therapy.

Diagnosis

Identifying the interaction patterns that encourage problematic youth behavior.

Restructuring

Developing a specific plan to help change maladaptive family interaction patterns by working in the present, reframing, and working with boundaries and alliances.