Renew.Item.of.Interest

            At Waukegan High School staff members have been attempting to implement evidence based interventions to address the needs of students that have emotional disorder disabilities.  Last year they implemented the Renew program.  According to (Malloy, Drake, Cloutier & Couture, 2011) the Renew program was designed to work with students with emotional disorders at the tertiary level when utilizing multi-systems of support.  Renew workers hold the belief that the most effective practice to help students with emotional disorders achieve success in the school setting is to help them identify their goals past high school, building off their strengths and assist them with identifying community supports that will help them to achieve their goals.  Waukegan High School also utilizes multi levels system of support and the Renew program is implemented with students at the school that are receiving tertiary level supports.   

            What I like about the Renew program is it works well with students that are visual learners.  Instead of having conversations with students we help them build maps.  These maps help them to not only identify their high school and post-secondary education goals, but also help them to recognize they can achieve those goals through utilizing their strengths and accessing community supports.  In addition, as a school social worker, we have a responsibility to provide evidence-based education, behavior and mental health services per practice feature one of the National School Social Work Practice Model.  The Renew program can be utilized to promote that practice feature.  What would be important is to operationalize what behavior we are looking to change with the student prior to implementing the intervention.  Then, you would want to have a tool that can measure how often that behavior occurs prior to implementing Renew as well as after the intervention has been implemented.  It would be important to get the teacher’s perspective, student, and student’s parent’s perspective of how often that behavior occurs before and after Renew is implemented.  For further information on the Renew program you can go to http://www.iod.unh.edu/Projects/renew/renew_main.aspx to learn more about the model.

Map 1: History and Story

A. The goal helps the student to identify the formative events that shaped their lives and are unique to their personal story.

Map 2: Who are you today

A.    The goal of the map is to clarify to the student what their life is like now and how they feel about it.

Map 3: Strengths and Accomplishments

A.    The goal of the map is to get students to think about their strengths that can be utilized in developing building blocks for future goals.

Map 4: People and Resources

A.    The goal of this map is for the student to identify people that are important to them, who can be relied upon, and who is not helpful.

Map 5: What Works and What doesn’t Work

A.    Identify situations that are detrimental for the student and to identify strategies where as workers we can help the student to become successful in those situations.

Map 6: Dreams

A.    To provide students the opportunity to be creative and to begin to set the direction for future planning.

Map 7: Fears, Concerns, and Barriers

A.    To help the student to identify the barriers that will inhibit them achieve their goals.  These barriers need to be identified so they can eventually be inhibited.

Map 8: Goals

A. The goal of this map is to help students begin to create concrete action step to achieve their goals.

Map 9: Next Steps

A.  To identify what next steps need to be taken for the student to be successful in achieving their goal and who they can utilize to achieve their goal.

Map 10: Essential Next Steps and Follow Up

A. To ensure any other barriers that were not already identified are targeted and eliminated. 

Reference

Malloy, J., Drake, J., Cloutier, H., & Couture, D. (2010, 2011).  RENEW Facilitator’s Training Manual. The Institute on Disability, University of New Hampshire: Durham.