Professional Staff
The JHTC is committed to providing the best care available today. We know that rehabilitating and mainstreaming severely traumatized children and youth, many incapable of regulating their destructive impulses and aggressive behavior, requires exceptionally strong professional and emotional skills.
A stable world and a long-term staff
The success of our long-term treatment program is largely due to the stability of the protective world we create for these children, the continuity of our therapy and educational programs, and the constancy of the carefully selected, dedicated adult role models who make up our professional staff.
Each Children's Home unit of 14-15 children is accompanied by a staff of 8 professional workers: 2 counselors, 3 special education teachers, a social worker, a psychologist, and unit coordinator. Certified art, music, occupational, and pet-assisted therapists meet with each child according to his or her needs. The Group House staff is built along similar lines.
The senior staff that escorts the professional staff workers includes the Executive Director, Director of Residence, Head Psychologist, Head Social Worker, School Principal and Housemother. Additional senior staff members include the administrator, Group House Director, and Goldie Kassell Director.
The tenure of the staff is exceptionally long, from an average stay of five years and frequently up to decades of service. This stability provides a secure framework for the children and enables the JHTC to continue developing one of the most advanced treatment programs in the world.
Professional training and staff support network
The JHTC's success in rehabilitating the majority of the children who come under its care can be found in the JHTC's intensive in-service training curriculum, advanced enrichment programs, and wide-ranging staff support network.
By providing a forum for staff members to address emotional and therapeutic issues encountered in their daily work, they are better able to cope with their own emotions when confronted by verbal and physical violence and to develop more effective tools and creative means of communicating with traumatized children. Training and support have successfully prevented staff burnout and the high turnover rates that plague mental health care facilities worldwide. The JHTC's intensive training and support programs promote the creative environment necessary for the continuous development of our highly effective treatment program.