Therapeutic Group Care

Therapeutic Group Care includes the Therapeutic Group Home Program, the Shelter Care Program, and the Group Home Program. All services are delivered in a client-centered, team-oriented, and culturally sensitive manner.

Therapeutic Group Home Program (Intensive Level)--Star

Program Description

Located in Billings, STAR is an intensive level residential facility that provides 24-hour awake supervision, treatment, and family style care. Staff to child ratio is 1:6 overnights; weekdays 1:3 from 7a.m. to 10 p.m.; and weekends 1:2 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; 1:3 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. The population consists of six male and/or female Montana youth ages 11-18. Admission criteria for publicly funded services requires the youth to have a Serious Emotional Disturbance and meet Medicaid criteria for an intensive level therapeutic youth group home.

Each youth is matched to a counselor who provides case management and a minimum of one weekly face-to-face individual contact. Additionally, youth receive four psycho-educational groups each week at STAR, and their individual/family therapy is community-based.

Our Milieu Therapy is founded on the principles of Social Learning Theory and implemented using the Boys’ Town “Rebuilding Children’s Lives” model. The Boy’s Town model has a record of documented effectiveness. Every youth shows improvement in 75 percent of their identified emotional/behavioral problems, 61 percent move to a less-restrictive setting, and 94 percent continue their success three months after discharge from therapeutic care.

Program Benefits

Our primary goal is to stabilize the youth, assess their needs, develop an Individualized Treatment Plan that can be implemented in the community, and provide aggressive, intensive treatment. The Treatment Team will review the youth’s response to treatment, provide advocacy for the youth, and make recommendations for discharge and aftercare. The average length of stay is 90 to 180 days. However, length of stay is determined by the youth’s progress and need for continued treatment at this level of care, until they have successfully completed treatment.

Other program goals are to provide crisis intervention, short-term stabilization, assessment for level of care, and an alternative to Acute Care Placements in Residential Treatment Centers and Psychiatric Hospitals.

Suggested Uses

• Resource and Referral/Recommendations for Intake workers who work with youth in natural/kinship/foster/adoptive families needing intensive therapeutic out-of-home placement services for their child and want to prevent a RTC placement.

• Family Treatment Unit workers can request this therapeutic intervention for youth unable to be maintained in a lower level of care, or are being stepped down from Deaconess Psychiatric Unit or a RTC.

*Youth who are actively a danger to themselves and/or others are not appropriate for the Center.

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