SUWS Wilderness Programs
SUWS Troubled Teen Wilderness Programs specializes in helping troubled and defiant adolescents with behavioral and emotional troubles. The facility operates in southern Idaho, and has been around since 1981, SUWS wilderness programs have assisted many young people in identifying and working through their internal conflicts and emotional obstacles, which have kept them from responding to any parental efforts, schools, and treatment. These are kids who are inherently good and have the potential to be successful, but because of unhealthy misperceptions regarding themselves, they have a very limited access to their own abilities, strengths, and positive attributes.
SUWS licensed wilderness programs provide families with a caring, safe and prompt intervention by making use of its search and rescue metaphor, individualized treatment objectives, and a flexible length of residential treatment. The relaxing wilderness environment and experiential learning help students in recognizing and building upon their own sense of self-esteem, while simultaneously learning the value of helping others.
SUWS excels at discovering and properly addressing the underlying cause of negative, unhealthy behaviors and working through obstacles resulting from internal struggles, rather than only confronting outward behaviors.
SUWS Adolescent Program
The SUWS Adolescent Program is founded on a search and rescue metaphor, “that human beings need and want to contribute to a cause larger than themselves”. At the SUWS facility, the search and rescue metaphor is the means by which success is accomplished. From learning fundamental living skills to basic orienteering and first-aid techniques, the students are personally challenged, but pursue further, as they overcome the challenges. In the midst of surrendering themselves, they slowly find themselves.
The search and rescue program includes first aid, map and compass use, and team response to emergencies. It is not the intention of the curriculum to train troubled adolescents to becoming future search and rescue professionals, but rather to give them the means to discover their hidden inner strengths and value, by becoming important functioning members of a rescue team.
Orientation
The orientation period for newly arrived students focuses on their safety as they adjust to their new homes for a few weeks. The basics of self-care are taught. A follow-up physical health assessment is made after 48 hours of the student's initial physical. This time frame is also an evaluative period to assess the student's emotional readiness to meet the design of the program.
The goal is to introduce the program as a safe scenario to undertake any challenge. The instructors establish that they will be there as resources for the student's growth, while simultaneously introducing the self-sufficiency the new student will be required to carry forward in each progressive phase of the treatment. The staff follows the philosophy of inherent goodness and individual worth, which lies as the basis of all healthy relationships.
Individual
The Individual Phase is centered around a student's growing awareness of self, as their immersion into the desert settles into reality. The Instructors introduce a set of primitive skills, and a written workbook curriculum is provided to the student. The balanced combination of environment, skills and curriculum provide a tremendous opportunity to assess the belief systems and behavior patterns that encompasses the student's newly emerging identity.
The goal is to gain a deeper and thorough understanding of the formerly hidden underlying issues, to identify and interrupt unfavorable coping patterns, and to facilitate a desire for a positive change.
Family
The Family Phase focuses on practicing the healthy coping strategies the student has learned during the Individual Phase. As students learn the effect their behavior does on other people, they start to develop communication skills that were lost or underdeveloped. They understand how both position and authority are earned through the process of gaining respect and the willingness to take each responsibility for the welfare of other people. The students take on goals at a group level and build deep interpersonal relationships.
As they meet the physical challenges, it becomes evident to them, that they are more capable than they previously thought. "If I can do this, I can certainly do anything" has become the underlying motto of the Family Phase.
Education Credit
The students enrolled at SUWS also receive a portion of their academic curriculum at the start of treatment each phase. Within the context of the completed curriculum are philosophy, outdoor skills instruction, journal assignments, history and science lessons, and stories. Students, who have successfully completed each course, may receive transferable credit from their local school district. The center provides parents with a grade sheet that presents allocated time spent in specific school subjects, such as creative writing, healthy living, physical education, psychology of daily living, environmental science, first aid, and personal development. Parents simply need to present this grade sheet with the records of the completed curriculum to their school counselor, who will have it assessed for academic credit.
“SUWS offers an effective troubled teen treatment program and troubled teen rehab treatment for teens and youth - There is Hope”.
If you wish to contact SUWS, you may reach them at: 911 Preacher Creek Road, Shoshone, Idaho 83352, Phone: 888-879-7897.
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