Children & Youth
Lifestyle Support Services, Inc. offers a dual diagnosis community based residential program which provides intensive residential, clinical, and behavioral services to adolescents. Appreciating the long-term effect of removing a young adult from a family based system, Lifestyle Support Services, Inc. remains true to the mission of providing a homelike environment. This goal is realized by surrounding each adolescent with family contacts and offers a sense of community.
Each adolescent is supported by a treatment team whose primary responsibility include assisting in resolving issues that may have interfered with developmental, emotional, behavioral, and social growth. The program provides a safe, nurturing, homelike environment in which young people take responsibility for their lives, develop the ability to self-advocate, and assures their needs are being met.
The concept of treating individuals challenged by mental illness and mental retardation in a truly integrated community setting while providing strong clinical and behavioral supports is a significant paradigm shift away from traditional treatments. The treatment paradigm of Lifestyle Support Services, Inc. provides for and directs the treatment of each individual. The influence of family systems and community networks on behavioral development is expanded through this paradigm.
Lifestyle Support Services Inc. believes individuals with mental retardation experience the same family, social, and educational stressors that contribute to the development of mental illness as seen in their non-MR peers. Accepting this, the program values of Lifestyle Support Services, Inc. are, and will continue to be, rooted in the principles and philosophies of various models. These include the Child and Adolescent Service System Program (CASSP) and the philosophy of "Everyday Lives," both of which personify the ideals of Pennsylvania's Office of Developmental Programs.