Bss Team Photo Summer 2018

Behav­ioral Sup­port Ser­vices: Boost­ing Ther­a­py through Social Activities

KYC’s Behav­ioral Sup­port Ser­vices team works pri­mar­i­ly with youth, through age 24, who face chal­lenges with self-esteem, behav­ioral man­age­ment, and social skills. Our 25 Behav­ioral Sup­port Spe­cial­ists meet one-one-one with clients to boost the lessons learned in ther­a­py through care­ful­ly planned social activ­i­ties and behav­ioral coach­ing. Behav­ioral Sup­port Ser­vices are always pro­vid­ed along­side ther­a­py to help clients apply the strate­gies they learn in ther­a­py to real-world scenarios.

Behav­ioral Sup­port Spe­cial­ists design and imple­ment engag­ing activ­i­ties that help ful­fill their clients’ indi­vid­ual treat­ment plan goals. As an exam­ple, Behav­ioral Sup­port Spe­cial­ists may use a game of bowl­ing as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to allow a client to prac­tice nav­i­gat­ing a try­ing emo­tion­al event in a healthy, sup­port­ive envi­ron­ment. A child who has dif­fi­cul­ty man­ag­ing their emo­tions may be able to intel­lec­tu­al­ly work through an appro­pri­ate response to feel­ings of anger through dis­cus­sions with his or her ther­a­pist. How­ev­er, when that child is los­ing at a game of bowl­ing with their friends, they will be in a much dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ment phys­i­cal­ly, emo­tion­al­ly, and social­ly. For some of us, hav­ing a chance to prac­tice the skills we learn through ther­a­py can great­ly increase our abil­i­ty to use them suc­cess­ful­ly when we’re faced with real-time challenges. 

Behav­ioral Sup­port Spe­cial­ists are thought­ful­ly paired with clients based on geo­graph­ic, demo­graph­ic, and per­son­al­i­ty com­pat­i­bil­i­ty. They serve as pos­i­tive adult role mod­els and as addi­tion­al resources for young clients who are work­ing through chal­lenges. In some cas­es, Behav­ioral Sup­port Ser­vices can also include extra par­ent­ing skill sup­port for par­ents whose chil­dren are receiv­ing ther­a­py. This unique pro­gram is one of many inno­v­a­tive ser­vices offered to fam­i­lies through KYC.


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