Therapeutic Options™

Therapeutic Options™ is a comprehensive and sensible approach to reducing violence and the use of restraint and seclusion in behavioral health care, health care, habilitation, and education settings. By focusing on the person as an individual and emphasizing the therapeutic relationship, by identifying and managing setting events and stressing the importance of supporting alternative repertoires of adaptive skills and behaviors, Therapeutic Options™ provides tools for building humane, respectful, and violence-free therapeutic and educational environments.

Therapeutic Options™ is informed by a strong person-centered rehabilitation philosophy and designed to integrate seamlessly into systems using positive behavior supports and psychiatric rehabilitation. Therapeutic Options™ provides staff with a set of tools for effectively and safely supporting people who may have extreme or dangerous behaviors. Among these tools are preventive strategies that encompass events well upstream from the emergent event, eliminating conditions that motivate aggression and violence in the first place.

Therapeutic Options™ fully explicates the body mechanics that underlie all the self-protection and aggression management techniques. These are thoroughly explored before practicing them in applied simulations. This method provides participants with an understanding of the principles of effective movement, allowing them to effectively adapt to novel situations.

All physical interventions are engineered for maximum safety for both people receiving services and for people providing services. Therapeutic Options™ offers a unique approach to teaching physical skills that promotes learning and facilitates skill retention. Rather than presenting a host of techniques that may be difficult to remember and execute, Therapeutic Options™ concentrates on developing a small set of perceptual, postural, and positional habits that participants quickly incorporate into their behavioral repertoire.

Core Curriculum Elements

• The four factors producing positive outcomes in people’s lives.
• Centrality of relationships.
• The helping relationship and essential qualities of professional helpers.
• Mindfulness in helping and the four cautions for professional helpers.
• Principles of learning and positive behavior support.
• Understanding behavioral function and designing functionally based supports.
• The effects and challenges of trauma and using trauma-informed practices.
• The variable threshold model of reactive aggression.
• Public health model of crisis prevention (multi-level prevention and support).
• Communication-based strategies for supporting someone whose behavior may be escalating to violence.
• Principles of Body Mechanics and Movement.
• Personal Protection Skills for staying safe during a behavioral emergency.
• Aggression Management Skills (restraints) for containing violent behavior.

Train-the-Trainer

Therapeutic Options, Inc. offers a four-day course leading to certification as a Therapeutic Options™ Instructor. This course includes two days of curriculum demonstration and two days of structured practice teaching, feedback, and coaching from a Master Instructor. Participants learn how to deliver both the Therapeutic Options™ verbal-conceptual curriculum components and the physical skills curriculum, receiving guidance on teaching style and delivery, organization of information, and problem solving during training.

Participants receive an Instructor Manual that includes a Participant Manual for use in their classes and a PowerPoint presentation diskette of the entire Therapeutic Options™ curriculum. Certified Instructors have access to consultation from a Therapeutic Options™ Master Instructor via phone and e-mail. The cost for this consultation is included in the program fee.

Cost

The base rate for the four-day Therapeutic Options™ Train the Trainer program, instructor certification, and all materials is $900 per person.  At the end of the first year instructors must attend a one-day recertification workshop.  Instructors must recertify every other year after the first recertification.  Cost for recertification is $500.

If an agency wishes to host a training and have a team of instructors certified, we will train up to 14 people on site for a base group rate of $9,000, plus travel expenses for the Master Instructor.  Base group rate for recertification is $5,000.

Discounted Rates

In an effort to support agencies that have adopted positive practices in their service and support systems, Therapeutic Options, Inc. offers substantial Positive Practices Discounts.

If your agency uses any of the positive practices listed below and you wish to claim the discount, please download the Positive Practices Affirmation form, have your agency administrator complete and sign it, and attach it to the registration form.

In appreciation for the service and sacrifice of our U.S. Military, Therapeutic Options, Inc. offers additional discounts to all active duty or veteran hospitals, schools, or community-based service systems.

Instructor Selection

Agencies are strongly encouraged to give careful consideration to the individuals they select to be receive instructor certification. Therapeutic Options™ instructors often play key roles in advancing positive approaches within an agency and supporting an environment of respect and inclusion, while increasing the safety of people receiving and providing services.

Please see the FAQ page for more information to guide your selection of instructors.

Registration

Visit our schedule page to locate an upcoming training or contact us to schedule a group training. If you are interested in attending a scheduled training, please download the
registration form, attach the Positive Practices Affirmation if appropriate,
enclose training fee, and mail to:

Therapeutic Options, Inc.
100 Delaplane Avenue
Newark, Delaware 19711