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| McCall's prevention staff offers the SMART Moves Prevention Program to children and youth from ages 6 to 16. SMART Moves (Skills Mastery and Resistance Training), funded by the Department of Mental Health & Addiction Services, offers kids opportunities to improve their ability to get along with others, resist peer pressure, succeed in school, and learn about the dangers of using tobacco, alcohol and other drugs. Youth who have completed the program serve as mentors for younger participants. These older kids have a profound impact on their younger charges. Kids working with other kids in healthy ways is a powerful prevention strategy. |
| Based on best practices from prevention specialists, this nation-wide curriculum applies the latest research and offers children and youth viable solutions for handling realistic and difficult challenges they face on a daily basis. |
| Separate components have been developed for specific age groups: SMART Kids for children ages 6 to 9 Start SMART for children ages 10 - 12 Stay SMART for teens ages 13 - 15 SMART Leaders for teens ages 14 - 16 SMART Parents for parents of kids participating in the program |
| Groups meet on different days depending on the component. Please contact a McCall prevention specialist to help you direct your child to the appropriate group. Call us - we can help you - 860.496.2189. Or click here to email. |
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Our Teen Center
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| In another and unique prevention initiative, McCall staff works to help families reunite after a child has been placed temporarily outside the home. The program, Parent Education and Assessment Services, funded by the Department of Children and Families (DCF), offers hope to parents and their children and strengthens their ability to keep their families intact. |
| McCall's Strengthening Families Program (SFP) is a 14-session family skills training program designed to increase resilience and reduce risk factors for substance abuse, depression, violence and aggression, delinquency and school failure. We offer three courses to 6-12 year old children and their parents: Parent Skills Training Children's Skills Training, and Family Life Skills Training. |
| The SFP curriculum is taught in fourteen two-hour periods. During the first hour, parents and children participate in separate classes. Parents learn to increase desired behaviors in children by using attention and rewards, clear communication, effective discipline, substance abuse education, problem solving, and limit setting. Children learn effective communication, understanding feelings, coping with anger and criticism, stress management, social skills, problem solving, resisting peer pressure, consequences of substance abuse, and compliance with parental rules. |
| During the second hour, families practice structured activities, therapeutic child play, family meetings, communication skills, effective discipline, reinforcing positive behaviors in each other, and jointly planning family activites. |
| A family meal is shared at each meeting. Incentives for attendance and positive participation are offered. SFP is offered in Spanish and English. |
| The Positive Youth Program, also funded by DCF, targets youth new to the Torrington area and living in the Woodland Hills Apartment Complex. Designed for children and youth and their familes, the initiative helps strengthen individual and family ability to handle the pressures of adjusting to new school and social environments. As many of the participants have recently moved from the Dominican Republic, the program is offered in Spanish. |
| The prevention staff assists area schools in a variety of ways, acting as consultants in the development of school-based student assistance programs and facilitating insight groups for students identified as having or having the potential to develop alcohol and other drug problems. |
| McCall's Insight Program is an in-school alcohol and other drug education and prevention course designed for middle and high school students. One of McCall's skilled prevention specialists facilitates meetings on site. The curriculum involves lessons focusing on risk and protective factors; family dynamics; communication and coping skills; and the effects of chemicals on a young body. |
| The McCall Foundation has been the lead agency in the development of the Stop Underage Drinking community coalition that has effected stronger enforcement of laws enacted to prevent teenage alcohol abuse. |
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Call us at 860.496.2139. We can help you.
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| Kevin Pettit Prevention Coordinator |
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