New Bedford STARR

The Old Colony Y New Bedford STARR Program helps build strong kids, strong families, and strong communities by providing high quality, flexible, and comprehensive intervention and therapeutic services designed to improve the outcomes for adolescents and their families.
Our vision is to increase stabilization of adolescents and their families we serve in the Greater New Bedford Community, to ultimately improve outcomes in permanency.

The STARR Program treatment philosophy is a structured, consistent therapeutic approach facilitated by a treatment team who incorporate input objectives related to the assets as a means to achieve permanency for the adolescent and their family.  We are strengths based in that all programming and intervention is developed toward helping adolescents achieve stabilization.

The STARR Program will utilize a number of strategies to ensure stabilization and rapid reunification:

• Providing focused interventions aimed at helping adolescents develop critical assets as identified in the Development Asset Model.
• Identifying barriers to stabilization and reunification and building plans of action that begin to immediately address these barriers.
• Supporting family connections and building stronger and healthier family relationships.
• Promoting connections to the Greater New Bedford community to the greatest degree possible focusing on permanence, connections and stability for adolescents and their families.
• Helping to establish a stable educational experience through extensive work with the school.
• Using strengths based behavior management; and engaging the parents and the schools to learn the behavior management strategies that are successful in the program.

Primary Stabilization Interventions

• 24 hour a day staff secure facility
• Individual, Family, and Psycho-educational Groups
• Bio-psychosocial assessments/CANS assessments
• DBT skills training
• Case Management services
• Educational Tutoring/Vocational Exploration
• PAYA/Life Skills Evaluations
• 24 hour emergency intake
• Crisis Intervention
• Behavior management system
• School Tracking
• Outreach and Tracking Services
• Home-based Services
• Community based recreation, support groups, volunteer and work opportunities
• Connection to community resources

Secondary Stabilization Interventions (Available if requested)

• Psychiatric/Psychological evaluations
• Family Assessments
• Medical Evaluations
• Substance Abuse Evaluations
• Educational/remedial Services
• Provide After Care Services
• Family Group Conferencing
• Specialty Evaluations such as fire setting, trauma, and offending evaluations

In conclusion, the Old Colony Y New Bedford STARR Program will stabilize and assess clients and their families and provide connections to community resources within the Greater New Bedford community.

For more information, please contact Ana Estrella, Executive Director, at (508) 990-1902.