Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness

We provide a treatment plan summary to take with you to your next professional or program. We will also be communicating with them via telephone to help ensure that the transition from Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness is seamless. You also always have the opportunity to contact us and ask us questions or to provide any other support you might need through this process. How do you involve parents and families in the program? Beginning with a caring and expert admissions staff, families are exposed to comprehensive family support and education in wilderness therapy. This includes: Weekly phone calls with the therapist with weekly treatment planning, weekly written correspondence, therapy assignments, and our innovative parent-to-parent mentor program. Why do I need an educational consultant if I found Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness on my own? We believe that having an educational consultant is an important part of continuing care. Even if you feel that your child will not be going on to an aftercare situation, an educational consultant can help organize treatment before Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness, and they also become an important planner in creating a treatment plan at home or in the next setting after Blue Ridge. They are very aware of resources and therapeutic programs and will work with your Blue Ridge therapist in determining criteria and features that will be important for your child's success. Your educational consultant also becomes an advocate for you. They become an advocate for quality all the way through this whole process, independently recommending and challenging the family as they go along through this process. What if my child needs medical attention while at Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness? All of our groups at Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness are staffed by staff that are trained in first aid and CPR. Additionally, every group has at least one staff trained as a Wilderness First Responder. This is the equivalent of an emergency technician or EMT. These staff are trained to handle any crisis on the spot. Staff in the field also have radios, cell phones, and satellite phones in order to contact our Blue Ridge Medical Director should they need to consult with them or any other emergency professional. Our medical team also visits every group and each student at least every fourteen (14) days. Between those 14-day visits, if anything else comes up the medical team will visit that student again or the student will be taken out of the field and treated immediately. My child's behavior isn't as bad as other children. How do I know if my child REALLY needs Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness? This intervention is for children and teens at varying levels of intensity. It is not simply about sending a child to wilderness to "fix" them, it is about changing the dynamic. This process helps to make them a part of the solution to the difficulties and struggles they may be experiencing. Many of our alumni students say that everyone should come to Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness to help become more aware of themselves, better communicators, more responsible and in many cases, happier. How do I deal with my own guilt about sending my child to Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness? Though difficult and scary to do, you are giving them the opportunity in this safe, nurturing, and clinically supportive environment to get their life back on track. Many people report that while their child was at Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness, and after the process as well, their relationship was closer than it ever was or could have been. Before coming to Blue Ridge, your child is most likely in a space where they are stuck and struggling. This intervention is your gift to help stop that suffering. What are the qualifications of your staff? At Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness, each group is supervised by a treatment team professional … a therapist. Our therapists have, at minimum, a master's degree and are licensed in counseling, therapy, or social work. Working with your student first hand, every day, is a group of professionals we call therapeutic field staff. Blue Ridge provides a minimum of 80 hours of initial staff training. Initial training is not considered completed until each team member has demonstrated to the program director proficiency in each of the following: Counseling, teaching and supervisory skills Water, food, and shelter procurement, preparation and conservation Low impact wilderness expedition and environmental conservation skills and procedures Group management, including containment, control, safety, conflict resolution, and behavior management Instruction in safety procedures and safe equipment use; fuel, fire, life protection, and related tools Instruction in emergency procedures; medical, evacuation, weather, signaling, fire Sanitation procedures; water, waste, food, etc. Wilderness medicine, including health issues related to acclimation, exposure to the environment, and environmental elements CPR, standard first aid, first aid kit contents and use, and wilderness medicine Navigation skills, including map and compass use and contour and celestial navigation Local environmental precautions, including terrain, weather, insects, poisonous plants, response to adverse situations and emergency evacuation Leadership and judgment, report writing, including development and maintenance of logs and journals Federal, state, and local regulations Wilderness Therapy Programs - Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness