Unfortunately, not all children with emotional or behavioral problems can receive the amount of behavioral and academic support they need from local school districts’ special education programs. The Positive Education Program (PEP) operates a Day Treatment Program to work intensively with these students in a manner that will enable them to remain at home or in their community, as well as to successfully return to less restrictive educational settings.

Day Treatment Program

PEP’s Day Treatment Program works with students who present a wide range of antisocial behaviors. PEP is modeled on the Re-ED principles, which were developed in the 1960’s, as an alternative to residential treatment programs. The PEP program was developed in the 1970’s as a response to a request from the special education directors in Cuyahoga County. Although schools often use it as a last resort, PEP is neither a dumping ground nor a place that focuses on the external control of behavior. Students who attend PEP’s Day Treatment Program range in age from six to eighteen. In 1997, the top five DSM-IV diagnosis of entering students, included: oppositional defiant disorder (54 percent), attention deficit hyperactive disorder (11 percent), dysthymia (4 percent), post-traumatic stress disorder (2.5 percent), and intermittent explosive disorder (2.2 percent).

Currently, there are six PEP Day Treatment Centers (DTCs) which provide a supportive environment marked by high expectations for appropriate behavior and an emphasis on competence. In addition, efforts are made to discover and build strengths that promote normal growth and development. The DTCs are partial hospitalization programs which develop Individual Education Programs (IEPs) for each student and provide a variety of services, such as: individual counseling and behavior intervention, social skills training, therapeutic arts activities, speech and language services, and crisis management/intervention. The day treatment program has many aspects, including:

• ecological support,
• outdoor education, therapeutic camping, and community experiences,
• parent support and education,
• liaison to juvenile court, and
• academic programming.

Many PEP students return successfully to mainstream settings and PEP focuses on enabling them to build the social and cognitive capacities that will help them succeed in such settings. A system of rewards as positive reinforcement is used in the classrooms to promote good behavior. PEP also provides young people with a socially and academically rich environment, readies them for reintegration into mainstream settings, and works with staff in those settings to support them once they return. The classroom, generally consisting of ten students, is an open arena for student expression of emotions and promotion of high expectations. Approximately 50 percent of PEP students are successfully transitioned to less restrictive placements within two years.