Behavioral Health Services
Psychoeducational Treatment Model (PEM^®)

PROGRAM ASSESSMENT

Before Girls and Boys Town provides program development services, an on-site program assessment is conducted. The assessment provides a snapshot of how your program and its collective membership function.

The assessment obtains data from four sources: 1) direct observations of staff and youth in program and school activities; 2) focus groups or interviews with youth, direct-care and support staff, supervisors and administrators; 3) pencil and paper surveys with youth, direct-care and support staff; and 4) a review of documents which may include organizational charts, mission statement, job descriptions, program descriptions, training and evaluation materials, performance appraisals, youth demographics information and youth files.

TABLE 1. Data Collection and Individuals Involved:

Data Collection Process	Youth	Direct Care Staff	Supervisors/ Administrators	Support Staff
Program Observations
Pencil and Paper Surveys
Focus Group/ Interview
File Review of Program Data

WHY WE DO ASSESSMENTS

Each data collection technique provides valuable information:

• Focus groups and interviews provide opinions and rich, descriptive information about the program.
• Pencil and paper surveys provide anonymous feedback on numerous topics.
• Program observations allow an outside, objective observer to see behavior and learning in context.
• Document reviews offer a picture of discipline procedures and trends in your program over time.

The assessment process involves identifying trends and patterns that emerge from the data. It is in combining the information from all sources and looking for patterns that the most representative picture of your agency is obtained.

Suggestions for your facility's future development are explained in the assessment report. The report includes an Executive Summary and Introduction, followed by two additional report sections: Assessment Results and Recommendations. The sections provide you with the following: 1) a summary of findings based on data collected and analyzed; and 2) goals and strategies for addressing issues raised in the assessment.

Data collected through focus groups and interviews, program observations, document reviews and opinion surveys will be interwoven throughout the report to support the overall findings.

PROGRAM COORDINATION

Girls and Boys Town behavioral health consultants will prepare you for implementing the Psychoeducational Treatment Model with a joint administrative planning session. This includes the coordination of a service delivery plan to maximize the receptivity and effectiveness of PEM. Program coordination occurs prior to on-site training or consultation and lays the foundation for the delivery of all other PEM components.

Program coordination planning helps you…

• Schedule training workshops so there is minimal disruption in daily routines.
• Refine and/or develop a supervision system to ensure Model integrity.
• Outline desired outcomes and implement outcome measurements.

PEM^® FOUNDATION WORKSHOP

The PEM Foundation Workshop is basic pre-service training for direct-care and administrative staff. The 40-hour workshop includes lectures, demonstrations, role-plays and other interactive activities to help you use the behavioral and cognitive interventions that PEM requires.

COMPONENTS OF PEM

• Treatment skills for youth
  • You learn that PEM is a social learning approach.
  • You see how focuses on teaching youth social, academic, independent-living and self-control skills.
• Teaching interactions
  • With an emphasis on "catching kids being good," you learn specific teaching interactions that praise and reinforce positive behavior.
  • You learn how to teach youth appropriate replacement behavior when problem behavior occurs, helping them regain self-control in crises.
• Motivation System
  • You learn how to integrate a structured motivation system into the existing program.
  • You learn how to combine the teaching interactions with the motivation system to provide a systematic, consistent treatment environment.

SUPERVISION WORKSHOP

This workshop ensure that your supervisors implement PEM effectively and accurately. Selected agency staff are trained to conduct observations on the unit, formulate and provide conceptual feedback to staff, conduct a point card analysis, and document all these activities for future reference.

ON-SITE CONSULTATION

On-site consultation from our behavioral health services consultants is essential for successful implementation of PEM. During the on-site consultations, we work with your staff, including answering questions and responding to concerns regarding how to adapt PEM into the existing treatment plan.

TRAINERS INSTITUTE

This five-day workshop is designed to help you provide your own in-house training of the PEM^® Foundation Workshop. The training is divided into two modules:

• Module 1: Effective Training Skills

  You learn effective training techniques and practice training sections in the PEM^® Foundation Workshop.

• Module 2: Leading Effective Skill Practice

  You learn how to be an effective skill-practice leader.

SPECIALIZED WORKSHOPS

You can request a specialized workshop with content that addresses your specific population. The length of an in-service workshop depends on the topic and the number of staff attending.

Need to train a large group? We can bring customized training and
consultation to your site. Contact us for more information