Non-residential programme: The non-residential programme includes weekly engagement in the Seven Challenges group which is designed to motivate youths to evaluate their lives, consider changes they may wish to make and succeed in implementing these changes. It also includes journaling, key working sessions and introductory sessions in digital media, artisanship and adventure therapy.
Residential Services: 24-hour care, 7 days a week led by the Head of Unit coordinating a team of therapeutic facilitators and domestic staff. Services include an admission phase, which helps adolescents to transition into the programme. Following the successful completion of this phase they will be welcomed as fully integrated members of the community.
Psychosocial and Family Services: at Caritas Tal-Ibwar we commit ourselves to welcome, collaborate with and involve the caregivers and family members in the adolescents’ journey. Services include family therapy; individual psychotherapy; psychological sessions and multi family groups. Services also include a holistic assessment offered to youths and their families, integrating psychological, social work and medical aspects.
At Caritas Tal-Ibwar, we meet adolescents where they are and seek to provide them with a professional substance use treatment. The following models guide this trauma-informed and family-focused treatment:
Attachment, Regulation and Competency (ARC) Framework
This is an overall framework within the three main areas of service delivery for interventions with adolescents who have faced multiple adverse life experiences, including complex trauma. It informs our way of being and guides our relations. It supports our thinking whether throughout everyday activities or within more focused interventions. ARC focuses on building secure attachments, enhancing self-regulatory capabilities, and increasing competencies across multiple domains. Every staff member at Caritas Tal-Ibwar is trained in the ARC framework. “It informs our way of being and guides our relations. It also supports our thinking whether throughout everyday activities or within more focused interventions".
Seven Challenges®
Seven Challenges is a programme which guides interventions carried out by therapeutic facilitators, psycho-social professionals and educators. It is designed to motivate adolescents to evaluate their lives, consider changes they may wish to make, and then succeed in implementing the desired changes. The programme helps adolescents to address their problematic substance use, their co-occurring life skill deficits, and other situational problems.
Referrals are accepted from entities such as:
Social Welfare Agencies
Entities within the criminal justice system
Education agencies
Families & Individuals
Other Organisations
Eligibility Criteria
- 12 to 17 year-old.
- Engaging in problematic substance use.
- Availability of an alternative back-up residential placement (can be family home) in case of premature departure from the programme.
- Plan for identifying exit placement once the programme is completed.
- Ability to contribute to and benefit from a therapeutic community either as day care or residential.
Processing of referrals
After the receipt of the complete referral and all relevant documents regarding care and custody, results of the assessment will be communicated to the involved professionals on average within three weeks.