Think:Big - The Newsletter of Think:Kids

:: THINK:KIDS SPOTLIGHT: OTTAWA

:: THINK:KIDS AT WORK

:: FUNDRAISING EVENTS

:: THINK:KIDS PROJECT OREGON

:: CHILDREN'S CHARTER

:: HOW YOU CAN HELP

Greetings from Think:Kids!

Much has happened since our move and further integration into the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). We are pleased to update you on all that we are doing to help bring hope and a brighter future to at-risk, behaviorally challenging kids in the coming year. In this newsletter, you will find updates on our work both near and far.

Right here at MGH, we've trained psychologists and psychiatrists in our department while also hosting trainings for hundreds of parents, clinicians and educators from as far away as Singapore.

In the Boston area, our work in the Salem Public Schools continues, and we have begun collaboration with the Department of Children and Families, the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the Children's Charter to train and support foster families who give homes to the state's most at-risk, neglected and abused kids.

Our work has also extended into communities stretching all over the globe. We have grown our base of support groups around North America and are collaborating with our colleagues in Ottawa on a grant to develop a parent training curriculum. Also in Canada, our work has reached as far as the Northwest Territories where I was fortunate enough to return to Yellowknife to train parents and teachers while participants from Inuvik joined us via teleconference in a testament to the cross-cultural relevance of our work. We hope you'll enjoy reading this edition's spotlight on our work in Ottawa as well as an update on all the exciting developments throughout the state of Oregon.

As our work expands to reach more and more challenging kids around the world, the evidence base for our work continues to grow as well. For example, a recent study in Ontario documented the effectiveness of our approach in residential treatment settings and showed clear evidence that the kids we work with learn thinking skills through the process of learning to solve problems collaboratively with the adults around them.

Closer to home, this month will bring the much anticipated opening of our clinic at MGH. We have a wait-list already and have hired and trained staff to meet the demand as best we can. In addition, we are in the process of designing our new space next door which we expect to be ready sometime this summer. The clinic will allow us to reach even more parents and children who need our help and support regardless of their ability to pay. We have also added a new Grants Manager and several volunteers to our staff over the past several months.

Of course, none of these extraordinary accomplishments would be possible without the support we receive from all of you. Especially in these difficult times, your support means so much to us and, most importantly, to the thousands of kids and families we help. At our annual fundraiser at his home, we were proud to hear Advisory Council member and Staples Founder Tom Stemberg explain, "Think:Kids accomplishes more with every dollar than any other nonprofit. A donation to Think:Kids is the best investment you could make in the lives of these kids." Who are these kids? They are the children in our own homes and schools, the children in foster care, group homes, treatment facilities and corrections systems. Wherever they are, they are children desperately in need of the revolutionary approach we teach. Thank you for your continuing support.

Sincerely,
J. Stuart Ablon, Ph.D.

Spotlight on Ottawa

Our spotlight in this edition is north of the border in Ottawa. For the past year, Think:Kids has been working hard to help community partners in Ottawa to implement our approach. Michael Hone, M.Ed., who directs Crossroads Children's Centre in Ottawa, has been leading the way. We're pleased to say he recently joined the Think:Kids Advisory Council. Below he tells the story of many agencies coming together around the approach to deliver continuity of care across
settings for kids and families.

Ottawa Community of Practice
Over the past two years multiple organizations in the city of Ottawa, Canada have been working together in an effort to improve mental health services for children and youth in the
region. Crossroads Children's Centre, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, Youth Services Bureau, Coordinated Access, Cornwall General Hospital and Roberts/Smart Centre have all formed a Community of Practice (CoP) around working with Think:Kids at MGH to help implement the Collaborative Problem Solving approach. The Provincial Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health at Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario has supported this project by funding advanced training to seven staff representing the various partners in the CoP. These staff are all able to help implement the Collaborative Problem Solving approach in their respective organizations and work together weekly to problem solve and fine tune the transformation occurring in the Ottawa region.

The CoP established in Ottawa has helped to ensure that parents and children are able to take the gains they have made at one organization and continue using the same language and approach in another organization. Often, parents and children are making use of multiple services from different
service providers. Using common documentation, a common language and a consistent philosophy ("kids do well if they can") parents and children in Ottawa are able to navigate the
system in a more seamless manner.
Working with Think:Kids has helped our CoP shift mindsets and move quickly toward full implementation within a number of settings in the Ottawa region. Think:Kids has worked with the CoP to help address barriers to implementation and to help the respective leaders problem solve with their staff to make this process as successful as possible.

As a CoP we have now been able to increase participation to include representatives from outside the Ottawa region, membership from the local college tasked with training new Child and Youth Worker staff, and a program that serves economically disadvantaged children and youth (Christie Lake). Over the next several months our group will work with Think:Kids to create a comprehensive parent training program to augment the gains made with children/youth and families at the organizational level. Each agency will be able to deliver a consistent approach to parent training that will help create a seamless approach to child and youth mental health services in the region. As well, we will be working directly with one of our school boards helping them move forward with the model to ensure that children served in that setting will receive similar services in both the educational and mental health sectors. We look forward to continuing to work directly with Think:Kids weekly as we continue to implement CPS in the Ottawa region.

Michael Hone, M.Ed.
Director, Crossroads Children's Centre

Elsewhere North America

In addition to all of the work in Oregon and Ottawa, Think:Kids has been hard at work teaching our model to the following new sites and systems throughout North America that have contracted directly with us:
· The Seaport School, Schools for Children, Charlestown, MA
· The Carlton School, Salem, MA
· The Pediatric Neurodevelopment Institute at Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, CA
· Crossroads Children's Centre in Ottawa, Canada
· Oconomowoc Developmental Training Center in Oconomowoc, WI
· Southern Oregon Adolescent Study and Treatment Center, Grants Pass and Coos Bay, OR
In addition, we just stared work with another inpatient psychiatry hospital in Connecticut!