Dept. of Child and Family Studies
TEACH program
 In
1990, the Departments of Child & Family Studies and
Psychology received a contract from Utah State Division
of Human Services to provide a therapeutic program to
preschool children who suffered from severe emotional
problems. This program came to be known as the TEACH
program.
TEACH is an acronym for
Therapeutic Environment
for Assisting CHildren.
The TEACH program uses a therapeutic approach that
stems from developmental and humanistic philosophies. The
program employs intervention strategies from play therapy
and early childhood education. In doing so,
therapists/teachers capitalize on children's natural
desire and interest in play to help them resolve problems
and learn new ways for interacting with their world.
Individualized goals are developed for each child based
on their specific needs, observations of their behavior
and assessments conducted by the TEACH staff. The
children are "mainstreamed" into the
department's early childhood child care program wherein
they interact with the children of the university's
students, faculty and staff in a naturalistic child care
environment. In addition, individual play therapy
sessions are also provided for these children.
The program has 4 primary goals:
 ...1. to provide
therapeutic and educational services to children who have
serious emotional and/or behavioral difficulties.
...2. to provide
parents with information and skills on how to more
effectively work with their child.
...3. to provide the
community with a resource in order to improve the lives
of children and families.
...4. to be proactive
in meeting the needs of children and families in order to
prevent more severe problems in their future lives.
Children are referred through the Utah State Department
of Child and Family Services, Ogden, Utah. The child has
to be between the ages of 3 and 5 years (the child cannot
be attending kindergarten), and toilet trained. The
emotional and/or behavioral difficulty the child displays
needs to be the primary concern and can not be incidental
to developmental delays, intellectual impairments, or
physical handicaps.
TEACH is directed by Jim Bird, Ph. D. Dr. Bird is a
licensed psychologist and professor of Child and Family
Studies. The program has a professional staff and is
supplemented by student assistants.
For more information please contact us at (801)
626-6507 or 626-6094.
Comments are
welcome.
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