Family Involvement
Family Assessment - A New Direction
Aspen Achievement Academy offers this unique and important service in addition to our standard service package. Like a psychological assessment for an individual, a family assessment can enhance treatment effectiveness by accomplishing the following:
- Identifying strengths and liabilities within the family.
- Highlighting the interaction or dynamics among family members.
- Increasing awareness of differing perspectives within the family.
- Pinpointing therapy goals for the duration of the Aspen experience, as well as during transition and aftercare.
- Providing direction for counseling with your home therapist.
- Strengthening treatment effectiveness by developing psycho-educational recommendations.
- Monitoring progress through pre- and post-assessment measures.
Why do a family assessment?
Often, when a family begins its journey with Aspen, the members are looking for guidance and direction in therapy. An assessment allows you to quickly begin to identify areas of focus and to make more effective progress. Assessments take advantage of our involvement with and knowledge of your child. At the same time, you regain credibility with your child by showing an interest in the treatment process, a willingness to share the burden, and a commitment to considering new options as a parent.
Aspen uses research-based, ongoing assessments to identify family traits and dynamics in order to develop a growth plan that is pertinent to your family:
- Family system and structure assessment (which helps identify strengths and weaknesses, family dynamics and issues impacting the family).
- Personality assessment (which uses an empirically-based measure that helps you and your child identify the core motive behind many of your behaviors).
- Marital/couple assessment (which provides information on marital factors that may be impacting your child's treatment effectiveness).
- Substance abuse assessment (which identifies the manner and severity by which substance abuse problems will impact your therapeutic experience).
- Readiness for change assessment (which determines the level at which your family is prepared for the changes that will be necessary for continued success).
The assessment process includes the following: a battery of 10 measures (given to parents and student), scoring, e-mail summary, 60- to 90-minute interpretation session with a family therapist, post-administration of selected assessments, and report with recommendations. About two hours of parent's time is required to complete the assessment, which is effective for married, divorced, and remarried parents. The cost is $850.
