By: Steve Van Bockern & Mark Freado

 It is always a pleasure to renew friendships and make new friends at our annual Black Hills Seminars.   Of the 230 attending, approximately two-thirds were new to the seminars.  Our hope is that they take our message of positive youth development back to their colleagues.  We were very pleased to welcome participants from Northern, Eastern and Western Australia, Belgium, Germany, England, Ireland, Scotland, and Canada who chose to spend this time with us. 

 Here are some highlights from this year's event.

(Pictured is Jasmine Pickner, World Champion Hoop Dancer)

Moving toward a more reclaiming model of service in a Belgian school program.

By Franky D’Oosterlinck, Eline Spriet & Cindy Kesbeke

http://www.oobc-nieuwevaart.be

Franky is an RYI Board Member.

The OOBC Nieuwe Vaart in Ghent (Belgium) combines special education and day care treatment for children and youth with emotional and behavioural disorders. From its early history the OOBC has a strong cooperation with the Department of Orthopedagogics of the University of Ghent. In this Department, Orthopedagogics is viewed as the science of meaningful action. It is particularly in this very view that we try to use and align different theories in our treatment (Broekaert et al., 2009; Broekaert et al., 2004).

Especially because of the day care character of our treatment, we stress the importance of the ecology of the child. The child is an individual and should be viewed as part of differing life domains: e.g. the child as part of the family, child as student in its school, child as member of the sports club, etc. In this sense, the behaviour of the child should not only be seen as a symptom of the disorder of the child, or as evolving from the possibly painful traumatic events during the history of the child’s life, but also has a meaningful function in the ecology of the different life domains of this child.

This is why we state that there are always two sides to look upon when working with children and youth with emotional and behavioural disorders; (1) the side of the actual (behavioural) problem, often identified at the time of the intake, and likely to shift during the treatment and (2) the child as part of several ecological systems in different life domains. In our view on treatment, we stress that there should be focus on both sides, if we want it to be effective.

The OOBC Nieuwe Vaart is constantly striving towards an integrated treatment program in which these two sides are incorporated.

By: Dr. Scott Larson

Straight Ahead Ministries, http://www.straightahead.org/

RYI Board Member

If there  was a particular stretch of highway where accidents routinely occurred, at some point officials would close it down and address the core issue that was to blame – whether that be straightening a dangerous bend, clearing an obstructed view, or repairing a defective section of the road. Reasonable people would scorn a proposal of parking an ambulance nearby as a viable solution to deal with perpetual accidents.

In the United States we have only 6% of the world’s population, yet we house 23% of the world’s inmates. Simply building more prisons or passing tougher legislation is as shortsighted to public safety as parking an ambulance near a troubled spot in the road.