Print PDF

At Massachusetts Boarding School, Student Success Is a Family Effort

An Interview with Frank Bartolomeo, Executive Director of the Academy at Swift River

Located on 630 stunning acres in the foothills of Massachusetts’ Berkshire Mountains, the Academy at Swift River (ASR) is a private therapeutic boarding school that is dedicated to helping struggling teens get their lives back on track.

Designed to continue the progress that students began during a wilderness program or other prior placement, the academy provides teens and their families with the guidance and support that they need to achieve the satisfying and successful futures that they desire.

Since 2007, the Academy at Swift River has been led by Executive Director Frank Bartolomeo, Ph.D. (Dr. Bartolomeo was ASR’s Director of Counseling for two years before becoming the Executive Director). With more than 20 years of diverse experience in the fields of child and adolescent mental health, Dr. Bartolomeo has played a key role in enhancing the academy’s effectiveness while ensuring that it remains true to its philosophy of respectful belief in the innate goodness and potential of young people and families.

In a recent interview, Dr. Bartolomeo answered a number of questions about the continuum and continuity of care that is provided to ASR students and their families:

How long is a typical stay at the Academy at Swift River?

Students can stay with us from nine to 22 months. The typical stay is 15 months.

The nine-month program is for students who need to complete their senior year of high school.

How quickly do you get parents involved in their children’s progress at the academy?

We begin working with parents during the admissions process. Then we have them come to campus very quickly, which is different than many programs. We believe that this reduces anxiety and demonstrates that the parents will be playing an important role in their child’s progress.

About four to six weeks after enrollment, parents come to our campus to participate in an “initial working visit.” That’s where we discuss length of stay. During this meeting we really emphasize to parents that they’re collaborators in this process -- that they’re involved in the treatment plan and the academic plan.

The students are involved with initial working visit as well. Students are sitting down with the academic director, the therapist, their parents and their academic advisor.

It’s not just a fun visit or supervised family meeting. It’s focused on a specific objective. It’s a task-focused day with a bit of unstructured time.

After the working visit, one of our therapists has a family session to help everyone process what they’ve just learned and done.

The ASR website mentions “family coaching.” What is the difference between family coaching and family therapy?

Our therapists do educate and coach families about family systems and roles. We try to educate parents about family systems in a way that is empathetic and that acknowledges that they’re responding out of compassion for their children.

I don’t want parents thinking that a weekly phone call constitutes family therapy. Family coaching involves helping them to respond in ways that promote progress.

Depending upon the nature of a family’s issues, we may encourage parents to get involved with a family therapist at home while their children are with us.

What types of issues do you commonly help families deal with?

Most of our families aren’t families who are disengaged; they are families who are overly engaged. For example, the most common relationship dynamic that we see is an “over-functioning under-functioning” relationship.

It begins from love. Parents see their child struggling and step in to protect the child from suffering and painful consequences. The problem is that this can become a self-perpetuating cycle: The more the parent does, the less the child does, and so on.

If this becomes a persistent dynamic, it becomes a dysfunctional cycle that sends a couple of messages:

1. The child may think that he’s not capable of taking care of himself in a developmentally appropriate matter.  
2. The child might start thinking that if he doesn’t do what he’s supposed to do, those things will get taken care of anyway.

We help parents to not fall into familiar responses of enabling and rescuing when they encounter problems with their kids.

In addition to the initial working visits, what else do you do to integrate new families into the Academy at Swift River family?

We have a one-day New Family Orientation workshop about every three to four months. Any parent who has enrolled their child during that time period comes back to participate in this orientation workshop.

We started the New Family Orientation program based on feedback we received from parents. The placement process can be such an emotional time that the information they receive doesn’t always stick with them. So, we found that inviting them back up for a structured day is very beneficial for the parents.

At the New Family Orientation, they get to meet other parents, exchange stories and realize that they’re not alone in what their family is experiencing. They also get to meet with everyone on our staff -- the academic director, teachers, residential staff, nurses and all of our department heads.

The New Family Orientations give parents the chance to become very familiar with every aspect of our program, and to meet all the people who will be working with them and their children. It also reduces some parents’ sense of isolation and stigma as they see commonalities among the other new parents.

Do you have similar workshops for parents of students who have been at the academy for a while?

About once every five months, we invite parents back for two-day Team Parent Workshops. Teams are comprised of kids from all different lengths of stay here at Swift River. At these workshops, parents of new students have the opportunity to interact and learn from parents of students who are further along the process. This helps the parents put their kids’ progress at ASR in perspective.

We have found that our Team Parent Workshops also do a great job of helping the parents to develop a strong support network within the program.

What types of support do you offer to parents of graduating students?

The day before graduation we have a transition seminar for all graduating students and their families. We typically also invite former students and their parents to discuss their experiences since they left Swift River.

The focus of this seminar is to help them finalize their transition plan. Transition planning is begun several months before a student completes the program, as we use home visit for students beginning or re-engaging with community-based therapists.  We’ll make calls to the therapists. We’ll have students meet with support personnel at the college they plan to attend and arrange for them to attend an AA meeting near the college.

If families choose, we have an alumni service that involves weekly phone calls for six months after their teen’s time with us.

Change is most frequently not a linear process, it’s a back and forth process. So we educate our students and our families that there will be setbacks and bumps in the road -- and we do our best to help them navigate through those obstacles.