Program Services at Endeavor Place Residential Treatment in Verndale, Minnesota

An Intensive Continuum of Care Addressing the Physical, Mental and Social Aspects of Adolescent Recovery

Endeavor Place offers an intensive continuum of care which includes daily weekday group and individual therapy sessions. The therapeutic components address physical, mental, and social aspects of recovery.

Those three words — physical, mental, social — are not filler. A sixteen-year-old arriving here typically has three distinct problems running at once: a body that has been treated badly, a set of thinking patterns that made the substance use make sense to him, and a social world that reinforced both. A program that only addresses one of the three tends to produce a young man who does well in the house and struggles within weeks of leaving it. The services below exist because each of them covers a piece of that picture.

Programming runs on a weekly rhythm. Some elements happen every single day, some occur weekly, and some are scheduled around the school calendar. The chart below shows how often the core clinical components recur across a standard week.

Group Therapy and Individual Therapy: The Clinical Core of Our Residential Substance Use Disorder Program

Group Therapy Sessions Directed by a Licensed Counselor and Anchored to the Individual Treatment Plan

Each resident participates in a minimum of fifteen hours of group therapy weekly. These services are directed by a licensed counselor and focus on issues identified on the individual treatment plan. Client feedback, sharing, honesty, constructive confrontation and self-disclosure in group are encouraged. Talking and admitting there is a problem is the gateway to recovery.

Fifteen hours is a substantial commitment for a teenager, and it is deliberate. In a house of eight, a group is small enough that nobody drifts to the back of the room and waits it out. Constructive confrontation from peers who have used the same substances and told the same stories lands differently than the same observation from an adult, and much of the therapeutic value of a small residential setting comes from exactly that.

Weekly Individual Therapy Sessions Addressing Personal Issues, Concerns and Behavioral Matters

Individual therapy sessions are a weekly component of the treatment process. Residents are asked to meet with counseling staff to address specific issues identified in the Individual Treatment Plan. A discussion of any concerns or behavioral issues regarding the resident is addressed at this time.

Some material a young man will simply never raise in front of his peers — a bereavement, an assault, something happening at home, something he did that he has not told anyone. Individual sessions exist so that material has somewhere to go. They are also where behavior in the house gets addressed directly rather than through the group.

Individual Treatment Plans Built From Assessment, Reported Information and Resident Self-Reporting

An individual treatment plan is developed for each resident. There are areas of commonality among residents and their programming in substance use disorder programming. The treatment plan addresses specific needs for each resident based on reported information, assessments and self-reporting.

The plan is the document that keeps the program honest. It is what group topics are anchored to, what individual sessions work through, and what progress is measured against when discharge is being considered. Two residents in the same house on the same day can be working on very different things.

Complete Schedule of Therapeutic and Support Services Provided in the Endeavor Place Residential Program

Health Education, Relapse Prevention and Coping Skills Training for Adolescents in Early Recovery

Healthcare Awareness Instruction Covering Lifestyle, Sexual Health, Nutrition, Literacy and Vocational Topics

These services are instructional lectures, group discussions and tours which focus on a wide range of topics including lifestyle changes, sex education, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, family planning, nutrition, literacy, smoking cessation and vocational instruction.

Adolescents who have been using substances have often missed a good deal of ordinary health education, or received it in a setting where they were in no state to absorb it. This part of the program fills gaps that will matter long after the treatment episode ends.

Weekly Relapse Prevention Education Designed to Reduce Reliance on Counselors and Support Independent Living

Relapse prevention education is provided to each resident on a weekly basis. This transitional service helps the resident integrate progress made during treatment into daily living and reduce reliance on the counselors for support.

That second aim deserves emphasis. The goal of a residential program is not a young man who functions beautifully as long as staff are within earshot. Relapse prevention work is deliberately structured to hand responsibility back — to move a resident from being managed toward managing himself.

Coping Skills Training in Communication, Assertiveness, Self-Esteem, Anger Management and Relapse

Coping skills are an intricate part of the program, so that residents learn to address communication issues, assertiveness, self-esteem, anger management and relapse.

Anger management sits on that list for a reason. Anger, impulsivity and a limited vocabulary for distress are among the most common presenting problems in adolescent males entering treatment, and they are frequently what the substance use was managing in the first place. Replacing a chemical coping strategy without providing a working alternative rarely holds.

Behavior Modification Through Positive Reinforcement Rather Than Punishment in Our Adolescent Residential Setting

Endeavor Place uses positive reinforcement to decrease the probability of undesirable behavior and to develop desirable change. Positive reinforcement allows residents to grow more confident, self-reliant and independent. Endeavor Place utilizes many different types of reinforcement.

Reinforcement-based systems work with adolescents in part because they are transparent. A young man can see the rules, see what he earned, see what he did not earn, and understand why. That predictability is often the opposite of what he has experienced from adults elsewhere, and it does quiet work on trust over the course of a placement.

Peer Groups, Community Building and Living Skills That Bridge the Gap Between the House and the Outside World

Daily Structured Peer-Led Groups Focused on Topics and Self-Expression

Residents are required to attend peer groups daily. These services are structured, peer-led groups which are topic and self-expression oriented.

Peer groups are led by residents rather than staff, which changes what gets said in them. A young man will hear something from another seventeen-year-old that he would dismiss coming from a counselor, and being the one who has to lead a group teaches accountability faster than being told about it.

Community Building Services That Connect Group Living With Life in the Wider Community

Community building services are provided to all clients as an integral part of the program. Our philosophy of bridging the gap between the group living experience and the community setting includes activities, resident volunteer projects and peer support.

A residential house can become an enclosed world very quickly, and a resident who only ever succeeds inside it has not been prepared for anything. Volunteer projects and community activity keep the outside world present throughout the placement rather than arriving all at once on the day of discharge.

Living and Social Skills Learned by Personal Experience Rather Than by Instruction Alone

Our living skills program is developed to help the resident learn basic skills necessary for independent living. Residents are taught life skills by personally experiencing them.

Twelve Step Programming and Spiritual Enhancement Delivered by Licensed Addiction Counselors and Local Clergy

Our experienced, licensed addiction counselors utilize the 12 Steps and other therapeutic philosophies integrated into the programming offered. Residents attend a minimum of three AA or NA community based meetings weekly.

The spiritual experience is based on the 12 Step program. Spiritual enhancement is gained through church attendance at the resident’s request and through AA and NA meetings. A local clergy member is available to assist in a client’s spiritual enhancement, and residents use a local clergy member to complete their fifth step.

Community based meetings serve a second purpose beyond their content. They put a resident in a room with people in recovery who are not paid to be there, in a setting he can walk into again after discharge, in whichever town he returns to. That continuity is one of the few parts of the program that survives the drive home.

Education, Vocational Preparation, Healthcare and Recreation Services Supporting Residents Throughout Their Stay

Educational Services Delivered Through Staples Motley High School With Additional Credit Earned in the Program

Residents receive their educational needs at Staples Motley High School. Residents also earn extra school credit through their participation in our residential program.

This is the reason ability to enroll in school is an admission requirement rather than a preference. A young man who leaves treatment clean but a semester behind has swapped one obstacle for another, and the extra credit earned through program participation is designed to make sure the months here count toward graduation rather than against it.

Vocational Assessment and Job Readiness Preparation for Older Adolescents Approaching Independence

Vocational services include vocational assessment and job readiness.

For a resident who is eighteen or nineteen, employment is not an abstraction. Knowing what work suits him, how to apply, how to present himself and what to expect from a first job is part of what makes leaving here viable.

Healthcare Services Provided Locally or by Referral to Providers in the Baxter and Brainerd Area

Healthcare services are provided locally upon availability, or a resident may be referred to the Baxter and Brainerd area.

Rural Minnesota has real limits on what specialist care is available within a short drive, and being straightforward about that is better than implying an on-site medical service that does not exist. Endeavor Place is a residential treatment program, not a medical facility, and healthcare is arranged through outside providers.

Recreational Services Teaching Cooperation, Peer Interaction and Healthy Enjoyment Without Substances

Residents work on fitness and leisure activities by working on cooperation with other residents, learning how to interact with their peers, and learning how to have fun in healthy ways.

That last phrase carries more clinical weight than it appears to. Many young men arriving here genuinely do not know how to enjoy an afternoon sober, because for several formative years they never have. Learning that it is possible — and that it is not unbearably dull — is not a soft extra. It is one of the things that makes abstinence survivable in the long run.

How These Services Fit Together Across a Resident’s Stay at Endeavor Place

No single component on this page does the work on its own. A resident who attends fifteen hours of group and learns nothing about money, or who completes his fifth step but cannot hold a conversation without escalating, has not been given what he came for. The program is built as a whole because recovery in adolescence is rebuilt as a whole.