Agency Description:
Devereux Massachusetts & Rhode Island is a private, nonprofit organization that was established in 1965 to provide services to children, adolescents and young adults with emotional, behavioral and educational needs. Devereux provides residential and group home treatment, educational services and therapeutic foster care to children, adolescents and adults with significant emotional, behavioral and developmental needs. The main Devereux campus is located in Rutland, a small town in Central Massachusetts that is approximately 15 miles northwest of Worcester and 50 miles from Boston.
Residential and Group Home Programs:
Across our continuum of care, Devereux provides services to children, adolescents, and adults with emotional, behavioral and educational difficulties. Our residential and group home programs are for individuals between the ages of 3 and adulthood, with approximately 60% male identified and 40% female identified. The intellectual functioning of our students ranges from moderate intellectual disability to above average, with the majority of our students falling in the borderline range. Approximately 30% are African American, 25% Latino, and 45% Caucasian. Many of our individuals have been exposed to complex trauma during the course of their development. The most common diagnoses include trauma-reactive disorders, Mood and Anxiety disorders, and Autism Spectrum Disorders.
Our residential and group home programs provide treatment across the Mental/Behavioral Health and IDD or Autism Spectrum Disorder continuums. Our campus-based units provide a higher level of structure and supervision to help students acquire skills in various domains that often include social, self-care, and safety, while students in community-based programs have increased opportunities to generalize such skills with greater independence. The majority of our residential students attend school on the Devereux campus, while some of the students in our group home programs attend public school. Of note, the Devereux School has self-contained classrooms that provide students with an opportunity to receive educational instruction with peers of a similar age and level of functioning. Students attending the Devereux school have an opportunity to participate in activities and services such as pre-vocational training, speech and language therapy, adventure based counseling, culinary arts, animal care, and sports teams.
Treatment Approach:
Our residential and group home programs embrace an overarching philosophy of care that is based on individualized and strength-based services, positive behavioral interventions and supports, trauma informed care, behavior analytic supports, and family engagement. Additionally, each of the program models is developed to ensure evidence-based interventions and is informed by best practice guidelines. Our residential and group home programs also provide a therapeutic milieu that is safe, predictable and empathic for all students. Each student has a multi-disciplinary treatment team consisting of residential, clinical, education, and medical staff who work together to provide an integrated treatment environment.
Our residential and group home programming for the Mental and Behavioral Health programs incorporates Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) to help students manage their experience of distressing emotions that result in subsequent unsafe behavior. More specifically, DBT helps the students to regulate their expression of emotions, control impulses, develop healthy relationships, and safely transition to a less restrictive level of care. In addition to providing individual therapy, the DBT program offers DBT skills groups, in-vivo skills coaching, and the use of DBT diary cards and behavior chains. Staff working in the program participate in a weekly DBT consult group led by clinical staff in order to obtain consultation specific to the program model. Our programming for individuals with IDD and Autism Spectrum Disorders integrates Applied Behavior Analytic (ABA) and relational approaches to increase positive social relationships, enhance functional living skills and replace challenging or unsafe behaviors.
Internship Program:
This internship is a 12-month, 2000-hour training experience. Each intern's training experience is tailored to their interests and needs and there is generally assignment to two particular programs/populations allowing the intern to: become a fully integrated member of the milieu and treatment team; ensure exposure and experience with all phases of intervention during the course of the year; develope clinical expertise and competence; and maintain a close and consistent relationship with the supervising psychologist.
Interns serve as a member of the program treatment team and are responsible for the provision of clinical services (e.g. individual, group, milieu consultation), attending treatment planning and review meetings, milieu and staff meetings, medication clinics, IEP and other treatment related meetings as necessary. Interns also work with case managers who facilitate the completion of case management tasks such as contact with families and members of the student’s external treatment team. In addition to intervention skills, interns build on diagnostic testing skills and complete approximately six comprehensive assessment batteries during the course of the training year. Interns also receive training and experience in providing supervision to others.
Training Program Components:
- Supervised Clinical Experience (DBT, ABA, TF-CBT, Diverse Populations)
- Assessment (including Autism and Trauma)
- Didactics and Clinical Seminars (Clinical Issues Seminar, Supervision Seminar, Assessment Seminar)
- Evaluation and Monitoring (interns will be evaluated on an ongoing basis during the course of the training year)
- Research opportunities (e.g., outcomes, pilot studies, etc.)
- Supervision of practicum students