
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


Skillful facilitation of House Meetings is one of the most challenging, but also most impactful, aspects of providing a treatment experience. Developing a group of troubled kids into a high-performing team, that absorbs each other's misbehaviors and promotes maturation, is a difficult task. Storming behaviors are common among kids in residential treatment. In House Meetings, a significant number of kids will deeply struggle with inappropriate meeting behaviors – ranging from aggressively menacing the whole room to simply not paying attention or actively distracting others.
However, storming behaviors, that sabotage team-building efforts, can be leveraged by staff to actually speed up the team-building process. One of the best ways to do that is to focus not on the misbehaviors, but on the impact of those misbehaviors on team-building. That is greatly enhanced by repeatedly explaining to the kids the purposes of forming a strong team, the purposes of House Meetings, and really the purpose of their entire residential treatment experience.
By Russ Bloch, MSW, MBASkillful facilitation of House Meetings is one of the most challenging, but also most impactful, aspects of providing a treatment experience. Developing a group of troubled kids into a high-performing team, that absorbs each other's misbehaviors and promotes maturation, is a difficult task. Storming behaviors are common among kids in residential treatment. In House Meetings, a significant number of kids will deeply struggle with inappropriate meeting behaviors – ranging from aggressively menacing the whole room to simply not paying attention or actively distracting others.
However, storming behaviors, that sabotage team-building efforts, can be leveraged by staff to actually speed up the team-building process. One of the best ways to do that is to focus not on the misbehaviors, but on the impact of those misbehaviors on team-building. That is greatly enhanced by repeatedly explaining to the kids the purposes of forming a strong team, the purposes of House Meetings, and really the purpose of their entire residential treatment experience.