TJJD hosts Power Source training for Texas juvenile justice treatment professionals
By John McGreevy, TJJD Communications
TJJD hosted nearly 100 treatment professionals from TJJD campuses and Juvenile Probation Departments across Texas for two days of trainings in Power Source, a sought-after treatment modality. These training sessions were held on Wednesday, May 31 and Friday, June 2 at the Barbara Jordan State Office Building in Austin.
Power Source was created to empower at-risk youth with the social and emotional skills they need for healthier development.
Overall, the program is designed to help youth learn effective strategies such as emotion regulation, changing negative core beliefs about themselves, healing from histories of trauma, and discovering alternative coping strategies to substance use.
It helps them develop resilience and acquire the social and emotional skills associated with success in school, the workplace, and the world at large
Evan Norton, Sr. Director of Integrated Treatment and Intervention Services, and Lacey Evans, Deputy Director of Integrated Treatment, were instrumental in organizing the sessions.
“I have a personal goal to increase the availability of meaningful trainings to the field of clinicians that work within juvenile justice,” Norton said. “It’s an underserved group of people. I want to be able to host conferences in the future where we bring in experts that work with these kids for collaborative discussions and training.”
Dr. Jess Linick, an expert in Power Source and director of youth services for the Lionheart Foundation, delivered the trainings on the group-based program.
“Our program is an evidence-based program that’s listed on the DOJ repository on what works in juvenile justice,” Linick said.
“At its core, Power Source is a program to support youth in developing the skills they need to lead healthy and productive lives,” Linick continued. “We teach skills and we also teach that the way you look at yourself really matters. We’re trying to instill a sense of healthy identity. It’s a social and an emotional learning skills curriculum.”
The presentation's structure allowed for dialogue and questions and answers while covering ways to help youth, with Norton getting a good cardio workout darting across the conference room with a wireless microphone so everyone could hear the questions and comments.
Linick encouraged the participants to engage in brief interactions with those seated near them and they shared effective approaches to best deal with dysregulated youth. Even with as much active participation as the session incorporated, a day-long event presented a lot to absorb, so frequent stretch breaks were built into the day, as well as the raffling off of posters, educational material, and most highly-coveted – TJJD coffee mugs. All of this made for a more productive, but comfortable experience for everyone.
Linick had done some work with TJJD before. “We’d been trained by Dr. Linick in 2020, right before COVID hit,” said Norton. The pandemic naturally put a pause on any work to be done and by the time things got back to normal, there were many newer hires to introduce to Power Source.
“We’re big fans of her work and we’ve been really impressed by the kids’ engagement in Power Source. We’ve hired so many clinicians since 2020. With so many new members of our rehabilitative programming team we wanted to make sure these people have the best training possible.”
“It was incredible to see the collaboration between county probation departments, and we had nine departments represented at the training, right alongside our TJJD secure mental health professional staff,” Norton said. “That’s never happened. The opportunity for collaboration across the continuum of care was outstanding. It was wonderful to see clinicians working at both the county level and the state level engaging and working on these complex views that make up our one system.”
“The first day was for providers that have not previously had a formal Power Source training. The second day was a smaller group focused on responsivity needs, support with application of interventions, and addressing responsivity needs in a group setting,” Evans said.
“Everyone really liked it, from what I’ve heard,” Norton said. “People really enjoyed the content and they found Dr. Linick to be very engaging.”
Linick also felt the sessions were well-received and she was quick to praise the people who participated. “I was impressed by the questions the people asked,” she said. “I’m always impressed by the level of clinical training that people have at TJJD. That’s made a priority that clinicians have a lot of different possibilities for intervention with youth on an individual level and for the different things that youth or their families might need. I think that was very evident.”
Photos: top-bottom - Dr. Linick and Dr. Evan Norton address the group; Dr. Linick; Drs. Norton and Linick.
Spotlight On: Ruben Trevino of Tamayo Halfway House
By Barbara Kessler, TJJD Communications
The minute Ruben Trevino picks up the phone, we are fast into a discussion about a mutually beneficial relationship with a community group that is helping the youth at Tamayo Halfway House.
It’s mid-June, the Texas heat is pressing hard on the Rio Grande Valley and Trevino has arranged for the young men at Tamayo who perform community service at the Elks Lodge in Harlingen to get privileges to the lodge pool. They’ll be taking a dip that morning.
“During the day there’s not so much going on (at the lodge), so the boys can go in the morning. That way the pool is ours, unless there are a lot of guests, then we excuse ourselves and move on,” Trevino explained.
This pact with the Elks is no surprise. This is Trevino’s wheelhouse. He’s the man with the community connections. Over his 26 years with the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, most of them at Tamayo House in Harlingen, he has worked out dozens of handshake deals that take the youth on valuable community service outings. They’ve have packed goods for the local food pantry, set up several 5K benefit races, cleaned up local parks and helped at charity dinners. Once upon a time, a corps of Tamayo teens hefted diapers and water bottles into trucks bound for Katrina-ravaged New Orleans.
Trevino simply epitomizes “service to others,” said Tamayo Supt. Eduardo Garza. When he’s not helping youths he assists staff with finding mechanics or medical services.
Garza says the staff and students at Tamayo house have a nickname for him: “The Mayor of Harlingen.”
As Tamayo’s Human Services Specialist, Trevino also prepares the youth for going back home by teaching them life skills, everything from how to cook a tender brisket to managing one’s bank account. Every week he walks the youth through two of a set of 10 life skills modules. And whenever needed, he helps the teens put those lessons into play – overseeing as they fill out college financial aid forms or driving them to get their state IDs or apply for an apartment.
Trevino, though, is quick to quash any notion that he’s something special. He attributes the smooth operations at Tamayo to strong teamwork by dedicated JCOs and staff at the Harlingen halfway house.
Tamayo House boasts an impressive tenured staff. Ten Tamayo employees have been with TJJD for more than 15 years, representing 336 years of experience working with justice-involved youth. These staffers also train youth in skills and oversee countless teaching moments.
The stories they could tell. Trevino’s personal one includes a struggle as a young adult to help his first-born son overcome special needs and recover from several surgeries to repair a devastating congenital medical condition. That boy is now a healthy 31-year-old who coaches and teaches in a small Texas town. He and his younger brother, a police investigator, both graduated from UT San Antonio, which made their parents, Ruben and Soyla, super proud.
Those early challenges as a young dad led Ruben Trevino to make a big pivot. He left a job at H-E-B to find what turned out to be a fulfilling career with TJJD.
It wasn’t love at first sight when he joined the Evins campus in 1997 as a recreation specialist. There were difficult days as he adjusted to working in corrections. But after he and other employees started the Diamondbacks baseball team for the youth at Evins, he settled into a groove. The team competed in the community in Edinburg and Trevino, who’d already clocked years as a coach, saw how it pumped up the Evins boys’ self-esteem.
“I felt it was my calling and believe it or not I spoke to my pastor. I said, ‘Father Mack, what do you see me doing?’ He said, ‘Ruben, this is what I see you doing’.”
Inspired, Trevino stayed on and joined Tamayo House in 1999 to take the human services job (then with a different title), so he could continue community-related work.
Shepherding youth is now in his blood. Our conversation, intended to be about him, keeps veering back to the day’s activities for the youth.
“Later this evening we’re taking them to the park, and they’ll play basketball and flag football and volleyball, and we do dodgeball,” he says. “But I always remind them, the staff, to stop every 15 minutes and get a nice cool drink of water, to hydrate themselves out there.”
Hydration is on Trevino’s mind because the boys are out a lot -- performing collectively an average of more than 400 hours of community service in a month -- and will be out again the next day, filling food bags at the Harlingen Food Pantry.
At the pantry he sees how they blossom under the encouragement of the adult volunteers.
“They feel that pride,” he says. “‘I did something for someone today.’”
Seeing that internal shift in the youth is what brings Trevino to work every day and why at 58 he has no plans to retire, although he does greatly enjoy his days off, immersed in family activities. He and his wife, married for 34 years, love to go dancing, he says, and they’ve got two grandbabies on which to dote.
Back at work, Tamayo offers him a place where he can make a difference. The work is not bump free. There are recalcitrant youth and challenging moments. But he believes the team effort by experienced staff well-versed in Texas Model and TBRI (Trust-based Relational Intervention) techniques, creates an environment that’s truly rehabilitative.
“It’s a good, good thing that a lot of our members are doing here at TJJD,” he says. “From Shandra Carter on down to the staff here. I’ve had several visitors come by and they can just feel the safety and security.”
(Photos: Top, Ruben Trevino; Tamayo HWH youth at the pool; Ruben, center, with his sons, daughters-in-law, wife and first grandchild.)
Celebrating our staff on National Correctional Officers Week
This National Correctional Officers Week we hope everyone enjoyed the lunches, tchotchkes, reusable water bottles, treats and general celebrations that Superintendents and many others put together to honor staff this week.
You do the uplifting but challenging hands-on work of helping young people reform and build a better future. And you deserve this moment.
As TJJD Executive Director Shandra Carter wrote to staff this week: "Your continued hard work enabled us to overcome significant challenges since last May. Each of you has helped build a strong foundation for success, and it is only because your dedication that we are poised to receive the investments and support vital to fully fulfill our mission. Looking forward, we have a hopeful and optimistic future. Your diligent efforts made this future a reality and have not gone unnoticed."
In short, thank you! Now please enjoy these photos of JCOs at various campuses and events from the week.
Patty Garza has one of the 'best jobs' at TJJD coordinating interns, volunteers and parole programs for the South Region
By John McGreevy, TJJD Communications
Ayres House youth listen to and feel the sound of calm during a 'sound bath'
By John McGreevy, TJJD Communications
The staff and volunteers at our facilities are always looking for new ways to help the youth in our care learn to regulate their emotions. Recently, the youth and staff at TJJD’s Ayres Halfway House, in San Antonio, took part in a sound healing meditation session, led by Jessica Neideffer and her very special assistant, a three and a half-pound dog named Lido.
Neideffer described the session as a process that at a basic level allows the participants to release feelings of stress, anxiety, and physical pain from their bodies.
“I work with sound and vibration to create frequencies to allow the mind to enter deeper brainwave states in order to experience true rest,” she said. “We create a safe space for participants to tune into their self in a new and different way and let go of the outside world. We return our focus inward and listen to the messages that the body is giving us. The sessions provide the opportunity to be aware of the internal dialogue in our mind and give us the chance to change it if we find the voices in our head to be unaligned with how we truly feel. We’re seeking a complete reset of the nervous system and energy of the body and mind.”
Neideffer was looking to expand where she practices her craft and reached out to TJJD’s Executive Director Shandra Carter, who connected her with Youth Experience Leader Elaine Windberg. Windberg put her in touch with Volunteer Services Coordinator Patty Garza with South District and Ayres House. “Patty already knew about sound healing so she was very excited about doing this with the kids,” Neideffer said.
Neideffer knew that the youth and perhaps even members of the staff at Ayres House might be wary of trying something so unusual to most of them. “Sometimes people are very skeptical about it because it doesn’t really have the credit behind it yet from some parts of the medical world," she said. “In fact, we’ve been using sound and vibrational therapy for many years. When we do ultrasounds, we’re using ultrasonic waves to see inside the body.”
Neideffer has worked with high school youth before and she understood the importance of shaping the session for Ayres House. “Every time I go to work with a group, I try to tap into what the lesson or the message is for that day,” she said. “I bring whichever instruments feel best for that group.”
“I keep things light, keep things humorous and I start to play one of the instruments while I’m talking just to get them interested and curious about the sound. It’s easy to get their attention once I start playing one of the instruments. As we connect, I tell a story. Then I get them to share with me what they’re feeling as they’re experiencing the sound, so it’s interactive and gets them participating in the experience, in their healing or self-awareness process.”
It certainly didn’t hurt to have Lido along to get the kids interested.
“Lido started accompanying me to different schools that I went to,” Neideffer said. “The kids just love him, he’s got this very big presence to him, for a three and a half pound chihuahua. When we walked through the door at Ayres House, he just ran in, with this sense of ‘I’m going to tell you what we’ll be doing today’. That’s the kind of energy he brings and anytime I feel like I can bring him along to a group session with me, it brings a lightness and it brings the ease and security that comes with dog, even if they’re not big. He has a big personality and he just makes you laugh.”
“Lido totally broke the ice,” Garza said. “This little dog walked into Ayres House like he owned the place.”
“A few of them were a little unsure, but I just asked them to try to have an open mind,” Garza said. “I told them nobody was trying to force them to participate.”
With 10 youth, five members of staff, and three interns gathered for the session on chairs, a couch, or quilts on the floor, Neideffer got things rolling.
“She explained about the sound bath process and about why meditation was important,” Garza said.
“A lot of the youth here have experienced childhood trauma. Trauma is blocked energy and she talked about how vibrations can release some of that energy.”
“We started with a meditation card deck,” Neideffer said. “The cards feature artwork to guide participants into a different perspective and open new conversation. Each participant picked a card, was invited to share their interpretation of the artwork and how it felt to them. Then I led a guided meditation to create safe space in the mind that provides a visual focal point for the kids to work with if the minds wanders.”
“After that,” Neideffer said, “I played the crystal singing bowls and allowed the kids to close their eyes and rest. The meditation sessions are an opportunity to explore the imagination and listen to what the body and mind are telling us -- notice if it feels loving, or not.”
When she finished playing, all the kids and staff were invited to share what they experienced while listening to the sounds. The kids got to play the instruments themselves to feel the vibrations. “They noticed how each person that played the singing bowls had their own unique way which created a different sound from the same instrument,” Neideffer said. “This was to show them the beauty of their own unique channel and how they share their energy.”
Neideffer spoke of how gratifying it was to hold this session at Ayres House. “These are the people I want to support, because it’s not just for the kids,” she said. “It’s for the caretakers and people working in the facilities because we all feel anxious, we all feel stress. These sessions help us to quiet the mind and allow the body to rest. That way we can reset our nervous system, we can get out of that ‘Fight or Flight’ for a little bit and really feel that deep breath that we’re missing.”
“When it was over almost all of the kids asked when Neideffer and Lido were coming back,” Garza said.