Treatment Plan
Square One Ranch will instill values, develop character and a strong work ethic while providing hands on experience on a working cattle ranch.
Square One Ranch will support a Charolais cow-calf operation designed to provide an income to help fund the various ministries that Square One Ranch is a part of, and in the process, provide sufficient work to keep the youth occupied and learning. They will learn responsibility by mending fences, long term planning by growing hay from seed to harvest, basic engineering through machinery and equipment repair, and the sanctity and value of life by caring for animals.
In addition to the cattle, there will also be pigs, chickens, fish, rabbits, peacocks, goats, sheep, horses, dogs, and cats. Plans also include a two-acre vegetable garden and a five-acre fruit orchard. Producing a large portion of our own food will limit our dependence upon outside funding, thus enabling Square One Ranch to use donations in other areas to better support the youth and the Parent Education Program.
Square One Ranch will provide an environment that will develop a foundation of discipline and respect, while teaching teamwork through hard work. The emphasis we will be teaching is that life is more than 'hanging out'. Life is spiritually, mentally, and physically demanding, but provides a wealth of knowledge, wisdom and rewards.
Academics
Square One Community Home School is designed to meet the educational needs of mainstream co-ed students as well as boys with exceptional behavior management difficulties. Offering a challenging and therapeutic learning environment, the community school will provide a rigorous, educational framework with accelerated learning, productivity and accomplishments in mind.
Upon admission students testing at a lower than appropriate grade level will receive customized instruction. By using individual lesson plans developed to meet that child's specific emotional and/or academic requirements and building on strengths and talents we seek to bring him/her up to, or beyond the appropriate grade level.
A low teacher to student ratio ensures personalized attention, which in turn will provide optimum opportunity for nurturing, encouragement, and positive redirection. Such an environment helps the students develop and practice acceptable behavior while enhancing social skills, communication skills, and decision making abilities.
The environment of the community home school will support and reinforce the program of Square One Ranch at every level. Many of these boys have had little personalized education opportunities, and/or have been pushed through a system that cared little about their learning accomplishments. Our teachers and parents genuinely hope to bring a level of excitement to the education the boys receive that will cause them to truly desire to learn and excel. A graduate of Square One Community Home School will prove to be much more learned, socially dexterous, and worldly aware than the typical high school graduate.
Parenting Program
We believe that the parenting program is a very important element of the therapeutic process at Square One Ranch. Family dynamics from which the boys at Square One have derived their behavior may vary immensely, therefore, predetermined counseling sessions initially seek to evaluate and assess each parents' cognizance, styles, skills, and weaknesses. The topics and focus of subsequent meetings/sessions will be decided based on information gained during the evaluation process. The goal is to offer to each parent the tools of effective parenting. These may include, anger management, communication, education on adolescent development, disciplinary issues, contemporary peer pressures and influences, and behavior modification. With such tools, the parents can improve upon their current family environments as well as support and reinforce the positive changes occurring in their child at Square One Ranch. We find that there is a direct correlation between the rate at which the boys adapt to and accelerate in the program and the amount of involvement displayed by parents and families at the advised intervals encouraged by the staff. Family visitation is highly encouraged. Square One Ranch endeavors to facilitate this contact at every opportunity. Additionally, the parents are encouraged to write frequently to their children and vise versa. Letter writing is an extremely effective therapeutic avenue.
Community Parenting Education Program
In as much as we see the need for these tools, values, and attitudes to be displayed in the family lives of those at Square One Ranch, we believe it to be obvious that there is a huge deficit with regard to these matters in every community. Moreover, we believe that most of the ills experienced by society today are directly due to the lack of parental effectiveness and efficacy in the home. Much of the art of parenting has been lost in the concepts propagated by the hippie philosophies, the change in priorities during the "me generation," and the focus on financial gain rather than families. Due to this loss, this "art" can no longer be passed along to posterity and the values of honesty, ethics, and responsibility fall to the wayside. While the mainstream media trumpets the disasters of the American society, and pundits and experts search the mindless crevice of empty rhetoric for blame, most thinking Americans have no doubt as to where the problems begin. Therefore, Square One Ranch has begun to develop a parent education program based in Judeo-Christian values concerning these family issues. Much of the information shared in the ranch Parenting Program will be perpetuated in the Community Parenting Education Program.
The majority of this program will consist of weekly classes offered to the parents in the community at area schools, churches and community centers. With enough success, we will compliment these classes with weekend retreats, and regional conferences.
Counseling
Although the intensity of counseling will vary from phase to phase, each boy will be involved in regularly scheduled individual and group counseling sessions.
Group
Group sessions, where each boy is required to interact and participate, will serve to enlighten them on the impact of their behavior on others, themselves, and their future. While talking in a group about issues such as, self-esteem, stress, trust, mutual service, the importance of moral excellence, family interaction, and relationships, individuals become aware that they are not alone in their thoughts, struggles, or needs. By enhancing his social awareness, as well as self-awareness, each boy begins to have a more acute understanding of his impact on his own life and his community.
Individual
Individual counseling sessions will seek to help the boys explore more personal issues such as family and individual behavioral history, attitudes, expectations, feelings, insights, struggles, anger, relationships, responsibility, chemical dependency, behavior modification, trust, self-esteem, decision making, and social obligations.
Family
Although not all families will choose to be a part of their child's therapeutic processes, Square One will try to establish ongoing family counseling sessions and work in concert with the Parent Education Program. Unlike most programs, one of the major advantages of Square One Ranch is that the counselors are also their teachers, house parents, staff, and friends. Due to this continuous proximity, attitudes and behaviors can be either encouraged or redirected at every level, and positive role modeling and shaping may be interposed at any given time.