News from Germaine Lawrence - August 2009

New partnerships to help troubled youth and families

The Massachusetts Behavioral Health Partnership recently awarded Germaine Lawrence a contract to provide in-home therapy to troubled youth and families. Our long standing commitment to working with families was a key factor in receiving this award.

Germaine Lawrence has a long history of working with families to help improve family functioning. We regularly provide family therapy, parent support groups and parent skill training. Through this contract, we will expand our ability to work with families in the home, addressing their needs and strengths within their environment.

Families will benefit from day-to-day in the moment coaching and problem solving, as well as family therapy and help with skills such as conflict resolution, negotiation, limit setting, communication, and advocacy. We will also help families access community based support services, and work with schools to assist with ongoing academic planning and behavior management issues. We are very excited about the opportunities that this contract will offer to help improve family functioning in the long run.

Service Learning Makes Summer Fun

About half of the girls at Germaine Lawrence are in our year-round school program, which provides girls with an educational and fun curriculum throughout the summer.  The other girls, who live at Germaine Lawrence but attend public schools, do not have a formal school program throughout the summer. To accommodate these girls, we have created an enriching and fun Summer Program for them.

The Summer Program affects the girls in the two group homes and the short-term residents in Browning Treatment Center. Because these girls are learning to live in the community, their programs have a dual focus of conflict resolution skills and resume-building activities.

The range of activities that the girls participate in is both broad and customized to their needs. Some girls attend a summer school or summer camp program, one student is in a Youth Leadership Program, some work in local markets or through the Arlington Youth Works. The group homes plan activities that mimic the camp experience, like swimming, crafts and local field trips. For girls in our short term programs, we create a schedule that balances psycho-educational programs, like a weeklong exploration of the culture and customs of a particular country, with community-based activities, like going to the movies or to the beach.

The group homes have also included an initiative about giving back to the community. Twice a week, four students and one staff participate in volunteer work and all of the group home residents have an opportunity to rotate through this schedule. The volunteer sites include:

• Iron Stone (a horse farm in Andover)
• Northeast Animal Shelter (dog walking and shelter clean up)
• Children’s Room in Arlington (a program for grieving children)
• Rosie’s Place (serving food to the homeless)
• Somerville-Cambridge Elderly Services (bagging lunches for delivery)
• Cradles to Crayons (packaging school supplies for the underprivileged)
• Newton Farm and/or Gaining Ground (still to be arranged-farming for low income families)

After such a gratifying and adventurous week, there is always Fun Friday to anticipate! Weather permitting, this typically includes a trip to Walden Pond, the MDC pool or the beach! The Summer Program provides great fun and exercise along with the opportunity to learn, reflect and socialize.

Improving the High School Experience

Over the past year, we have experienced an increase in the number of girls who are referred to us for a group home placement.  To accommodate this need, we reorganized our programs and opened a second group home.  With more girls in group homes, we have more girls attending public high school and over the past year, we have worked with Arlington Public School to help mitigate the impact on the high school, as well as put into place supports that will help our girls have a successful experience. 

Arlington High School Special Education Director Mark Ryder restructured the special education program to better serve students like ours who are struggling to succeed academically while dealing with emotional disabilities. He created the Supported Learning Center (SLC), which operates on a tier system that allows students to access support as needed. Third tier is self contained for students who take all their classes within the SLC, while enjoying the general high school experience out of the classroom.  Second tier has students who take about half their classes in the SLC and half in the mainstream classrooms.  The first tier is for students whose classes are mostly in the mainstream but, have access to the additional services and support that the SLC provides.  The tier system is fluid and students are closely monitored to make sure that their needs are being fully met. In the last school year, Germaine Lawrence students made up about half of the students in the SLC. 

With the advent of the Supported Learning Center (SLC) at Arlington High, many of our students now enjoy the public high school experience which ultimately helps ready them for a transition back to the community.  Our staff credits open communication, regular meetings and the resilience of our students for this success.  In addition to their classroom work, our students have taken advantage of the extracurricular opportunities a public school can offer.  This past school year our students were on sports teams and attended the prom.

This coming school year we are increasing our connection with Arlington Public Schools.  We will have a school counselor from Germaine Lawrence working part of her day at the high school and another school counselor working part of her day at the middle school.  They will support our students while at school and will be an important communication bridge between teachers Germaine Lawrence staff.  In addition, we will have an Arlington Public School Liaison who will help our students acclimate to their new environments at the high school and middle school.  We are very excited about our innovative collaboration that lets our students benefit from their public school experience and still receive the level of therapeutic support they need.   

Young Girls at Play

For an hour every Tuesday and Thursday, it is play time at Germaine Lawrence as our newly founded Young Girls Group gathers.  This group was created to address the needs of our emerging population of girls under the age of fourteen who spend most of their time with older girls in the dorms.  The Young Girls Group provides a therapeutic environment where they learn to interact with each other, to problem solve and to just have age-appropriate fun.

Under the supervision and guidance of art teacher Colleen Breur, they learn to build and maintain friendships, to problem solve and to compromise.  They decide what games to play, or they just make time for all their favorites.  The group also has their own special celebrations to mark each other’s milestones; even birthday parties with hats, tiaras and frills are part of the festivity.  For some of the girls, this is the first birthday party they have ever had.   They enthusiastically get into the spirit of the day and want to experience everything.  While most of the games and party favors they use are designed for much younger kids, the girls in the group embrace the festive accoutrements and activities.  They no longer feel the pressure to act older than they are in order to fit in with the older girls.  In this group, silly games are the norm and nothing is too young.  When they are together in the Young Girls Group, they are just kids.  They can let their hair down.

Colleen Breur, who says that spending time with the Young Girls Group is like revisiting her youth, describes the girls as funny, playful, energetic, and exhausting! They play the same Dixie Chicks song over and over while singing along off-key, laugh uncontrollably, and then they do it all over again.  They love the fact that they are indeed young and feel special because they have their own group where they can be themselves.  They are happy to be the youngest, and, for a couple of hours each week, they are not trying to grow up too fast!

The girls and staff enjoy watching DVDs rated PG on rainy days when they can’t be out playing.  Jump ropes, kickball, scooters, big bouncy balls, balloons and yarn are also a big hit.  One of the most unusual requests from the Young Girls Group is for fabric because the girls would love to learn how to make their own clothes.  No matter how much or how little they have, the girls always seem to have fun! 

The girls in the group decided to hold a series of fundraisers to raise money for additional games and equipment.  They sold lemonade one hot day this summer and have a car wash planned for the near future. 

If you would be interested in providing funds for those little extras that will help make the Young Girls Group a little more special and help a girl just be a kid, contact Nyasha Pfukwa, Development Coordinator, at 781-859-1220.  After all,
everyone needs to have a clean car, right? 

Women of Excellence Breakfast

We will return to the Harvard Club, 374 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston for our 8th Annual Women of Excellence Breakfast. We are pleased to welcome back Attorney General Martha Coakley as our Mistress of Ceremonies.

Each year at our event, we give out Women of Excellence and Rising Stars awards. Women of Excellence and Rising Stars are outstanding women who have made substantial contributions toward advancing the well being of girls. The women we honor may be prominent in the public eye or work behind the scenes.

This year, we are excited to honor:

Gloria Nemerowicz, Ph.D., President, Pine Manor College
Dr. Nemerowicz has been President of Pine Manor College for 13 years.  Under Gloria’s leadership, PMC adopted a mission of preparing women for inclusive leadership and social responsibility in their workplaces, families, and communities. PMC reduced tuition by 34% in order to make it affordable for many traditionally underserved girls who otherwise might not be able to attend a small private college.  For the past five years U.S. News & World Report has ranked Pine Manor among the most diverse colleges in the country.  PMC incorporates extensive community service into the curriculum and student life activities.  Gloria has also developed the Center for Inclusive Leadership and Social Responsibility, which sponsors leadership camps and activities for high school aged girls, especially those in urban and typically underserved schools, to help develop self-esteem and community mindedness.

Jessica Henderson Daniel, Ph.D., A.B.P.P., assistant professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of training in psychology at Children’s Hospital--Boston. She is adjunct associate professor of psychology in the Clinical Psychology Program at Boston University.
Dr. Daniel has devoted much of her career to mentoring and training.  She regularly trains on diversity and gender issues, the development of adolescent girls and media images of women.  She is the Associate Director of the LEAH (Leadership Education in Adolescent Health) Program at Children’s Hospital, which offers seminars in adolescent health promotion, research, advocacy, public policy, prevention, eating disorders, cultural competency and teaching.  She developed Next Generation, a mentoring program to increase the number of black women who conduct research on black adolescent girls and organized Emerging Leaders, a mentoring program to increase the number of women of color who are leaders in psychology. Daniel is coeditor of the Complete Guide to Mental Health for Women (Beacon Press, 2003). Her writings have addressed trauma—sexual and racial—in the lives of black females.

Mariko Sakurai, Ph.D., Program Director, Project GROW
Dr. Sakura is a psychologist at the Brookline Community Mental Health Center.  She founded a program known as Project GROW or “Girls, Relationships Offer Well-Being”.  The objective of the program is to address challenges girls face as in the middle school years.  They have found that by empowering girls during this time of great transition, they can limit the incidents of bullying and “relational aggression”.  Project GROW’s approach is very similar to Germaine Lawrence’s treatment style of helping girls develop skills to build healthy relationships and find something that they enjoy and are good at.  Project GROW also offers group for Asian American girls who are adopted. 

Read about past honorees.

For more information, please contact Nyasha Pfukwa.