Virginia Home for Boys and Girls

Goal 1: Group Care Services VHBG uses the highly successful evidence-based Teaching-Family Model of care. Trained Youth Counselors use this model with a goal to help children transition to foster care, adoption, or back to their biological family.
Goal 2: Our Independent Living Arrangement program goal is to ensure that youth attain or make progress towards attaining independent living goals, are satisfied with services received, and successfully transition into independent living as young adults.
Goal 3: Our goal in Therapeutic Resouces is to ensure clients attain or make progress toward individualized goals and clients are satisfied with the services provided. We aim to restore hope through teaching and healing, to ensure children and their families thrive.
Goal 4: Our JGW School's goal is to help students to return to public school, graduate, provide the services required within the IEP; and provide counseling as needed.

Strategy for Goal 1: A team of caring Youth Counselors guides and engages youth through their daily activities and uses an approach of Positive Behavioral Support. This approach is more interested in the “why” behind the behavior in order to better understand the underlying need of the youth and overcome maladaptive ways of meeting those needs. Through the establishment of safe, therapeutic relationships, practitioners implementing the Teaching-Family Model seek to instill core values that speak to the healthy individual, healthy relationships, and the incorporation into the surrounding community.
Strategy for Goal 2: ILA services include personal development skills such as communication, decision-making, conflict resolution, and independent living skills such as career exploration, job skills, money management, housing, and transportation.
Strategy for Goal 3: We provide individual and family counseling supported by our on-campus nursing and psychiatric care.
Strategy for Goal 4: Our JGW program is based on the philosophy that adolescents with a history of school problems related to emotional struggles, and/or specific learning disabilities, can best succeed in a school environment where there is a concern for the total individual. Our positive behavioral ideology, educational philosophy as well as the structured implementation of principles of the Teaching-Family models are consistent with the values John G. Wood School embodies.

Virginia Home for Boys and Girls uses a trauma-informed approach in alignment with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s concept of a trauma-informed organization. For more than 20 years, SAMHSA has been a leader in recognizing the need for trauma-informed systems of care. This framework follows four key assumptions in providing trauma-informed care: realization, recognition, response, and resisting re-traumatization.

VHBG trains our employees to realize the widespread impact of trauma (including facts about Adverse Childhood Experiences, which are pervasive in our clients, and the impact of trauma on brain development and behavior) and understand potential paths for recovery such as the importance of relationships, voice and choice, empowerment, learning self-regulation, and learning skills of competency.

We recognize the signs and symptoms of trauma in clients, families, staff, and others involved in the system. We ask, “what happened to this person?” and “what underlying need is this person trying to meet with this behavior?” instead of “what’s wrong with this person?”

We respond by fully integrating knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures, and trained practices. In interactions with clients, we focus on safety, relationship building, the professionalism of our staff, the teaching of social and emotional skills in collaborative ways, shared decision making, and individualized care. We meet routinely as teams in order to share observations, celebrate successes, and plan interventions. We protect staff members from vicarious trauma by restricting their workload and work hours, and by meeting routinely with them one-on-one for supportive supervision and conceptual development. We conduct objective evaluations of staff practices and implementation of training, including interviewing clients regarding their satisfaction with how they are treated and the safety of those around them.

We seek to actively resist re-traumatization, especially during crisis intervention. We focus on empathy, praise, and connecting with the emotional brain so as to help clients regulate their own behavior. And finally, we use least-restrictive restraints only as a last resort when safety is at stake.

1. In Group Care Services, VHBG averages serving 40 youth per year with an average of 91% goal attainment and a 9-month average length of stay.
2. In our John G. Wood School, VHBG averages serving 71 students per year with an average of 60% IEP goal attainment and an average length of stay of 2 1/2 school years.
3. In our new Independent Living program VHBG has served 16 young adults, 91% of ILA participants met their goals.
4. In the Pride Place Program VHBG has served 13 young adults. 67% of Pride Place participants met their goals.