TreeHouse Inc

Our goals for every TreeHouse teen begin with establishing healthy internal beliefs and skills. Teens learn to form healthy relationships with peers and mentors, build coping skills to navigate obstacles in life, move toward a stronger relationship with a loving God, and discover personal value and purpose.

When these internal beliefs are established, teens display positive external behaviors and attitudes. Teens graduate high school, engage in an educational or career path after high school, decrease negative mental health symptoms, and develop hope for their future.

Teens aren’t the only ones who benefit! When these internal beliefs and skills and external expressions can be seen in a teen’s life, we believe it will make a significant contribution to the communities in which teens live –unleashing untold potential for all of us.

These goals are accomplished through participation in our multi-faceted program offerings and in the context of long-term, trusting relationships between a caring adult and a teen experiencing hopelessness.

Our balanced and rigorous programs meet the social, emotional, physical, intellectual, and spiritual needs of teens. TreeHouse provides a safe environment for teens to receive support, guidance, and practical skills in making better choices today to live as healthy adults tomorrow. We have high expectations for our teens, and we encourage academic effort and vocational pursuits to improve their lives and the greater community.

TreeHouse’s program and curriculum is based partly on Bonnie Benard’s resiliency model showing that teens thrive when given high expectations, caring relationships, and meaningful opportunities to contribute. Her research is based on a study of children born into extremely stressful situations where parents are mentally ill, addicted, abusive or who live in impoverished circumstances. She found that all human beings have an innate ability to have resilience, but there are key elements that when present will alter or reverse the potential negative outcomes of youth living in highly stressful environments, such as poverty. TreeHouse provides the key elements of caring relationships, high expectations, and meaningful opportunities to contribute.

TreeHouse also uses a best-practices approach modeled after Gisela Konopka's research and study of troubled adolescents to create the caring community teens need to combat the hopelessness they experience. Finally the Search Institute informs TreeHouse's work to build Developmental Assets in teens, empowering them to develop coping skills and greater resiliency, so they are able to overcome the negative effects of their systemic or situational hopelessness. Based in youth development, resiliency and prevention research, the Developmental Assets framework has proven to be effective and has become the most widely used approach to positive youth development in the United States. In fact, research shows that levels of Assets are better predictors of destructive behaviors than poverty, family structure or other demographic differences.

Our extensive history and experience, as well as our results, demonstrate that TreeHouse is effectively making a difference in the lives of youth in the Twin Cities. TreeHouse, in collaboration with Wilder Research, regularly evaluates the impact of our programs in teens’ lives. Together, we have found that our teens are making tangible strides relative to our goals for every teen:
• 73% believe they’re lovable, capable, and worthwhile
• 78% give support to their peers
• 69% stand up against negative peer pressure
• 80% have goals for their future