The Alvarado Consulting and Treatment Group aims to serve the most troubled and the most troubling of youth in our care.
These children have found ways to fail and be failed by most adults in their lives. Conventional treatment modalities and increased levels of placement are not providing the necessary ingredients for lasting recovery. The behaviors that these children display invites us to abandon them at the first opportunity, and we often do.
These top tier children become the most expensive and intensive children in our systems of care rendering them incapable of developing the necessary skills to live in the real world. They become the adults who continue to struggle with everyday life and impose high costs to our medical emergency and mental health providers.
Our wounded children have learned how to leave one placement after another. It is our responsibility to teach them how to stay.
At the Alvarado Group we believe that it is incumbent upon each of us in the child welfare, child mental health, juvenile justice and educational systems to operationalize responses to these children that will turn their stories around. Needless to say these new responses may look very different than what we currently have in place.
“I have worked at Family Care Network in San Luis Obispo, CA, for 12 years. We engage with the highest needs children in our county, whether it be through Foster Care, or Probation, integrating them back into their families and supporting them along the way. Jules came to our county a few years ago and did an all day training on trauma informed care. I purchased her materials and continue to provide it to others. Just wish she was closer. My job as a Family Advocate is to build trust, and basically walk alongside them as they go through this very tough journey, sharing my experiences with my own dual diagnosed adult/child who continues to go in and out of the jail revolving door. Your teaching and messages have inspired me through out the day, and I save your daily inspirations to use with the families I serve and to lift me up during a very difficult day. Again, thank you so much, I have many inspirational sayings from you that I use on a daily basis.” – JoAnne Garibay, Family Partner
We understand the need for a parallel process of recovery. Those who serve our traumatized youth and families will experience the vicarious trauma backlash. Secondary Traumatic Stress is played out through high turnover, less than desirable outcomes for challenging youth, and disengaged staff.
Through our training and consultation programs we invite you to consider a new way to respond to children of trauma while working toward higher levels of emotional regulation for your staff simultaneously.
We provide full day to full week, intensive, on-site training, consultation and program development in Trauma Informed Care and Secondary Traumatic Stress Recovery. We also offer clinical consultations by teleconference and executive coaching for staff responsible for implementing paradigms of change.
