Highridge Family Center Intensive Outpatient Program

About the Program

Category: Children and Youth (Best in Category)

Year: 2021

Highridge Family Center (Highridge) is a free 60-bed, Monday-Friday residential program serving youth between 11 and 16 who reside in Palm Beach County. The families seeking services through Highridge have been struggling with conflicted family relations, trauma symptoms related to adversity, poor academics, disruptive school behavior, drug experimentation, poor peer group choices, minor law infractions, and emotional difficulties. Clients and their families receive weekly family therapy and individual therapy. Group therapy sessions are held daily and focus on emotion regulation, therapeutic activities and coping strategies, and how to safely spend time with family on the weekends. Highridge residents are provided education through the alternative school on campus, part of the Palm Beach County School district. In addition, residents are served three meals daily and a snack and participate in recreational activities and sports. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Highridge altered programming to become an Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP), rather than closing its doors to families or limiting services to telehealth only, to serve a population that was in need of a higher level of care. The alteration of the program and conversion to an IOP was the first time in over twenty-five years that the program changed its five-day residential structure.