English Summary

The Oasis resiential center is a private facility for the treatment and assessment of children up to 14 years of age with or without their parents. We have round-the clock manning and access to psychologists and consultants in the fields of child and adult psychiatry, all of which makes emergency placing possible.

The Oasis consists of three units:

The FAMILY UNIT can accommodate 34 children and their parents. The unit has its own nursery school. The main target group of the Family unit is children and families with social problems, mental disorders and handicaps, relationship problems or any other problems that need to be assessed and/or treated.

The CHILDREN'S UNIT with its integrated school can receive 14 children aged 7-14 years old. The main target group for this unit is children with advanced social disorders and/or aggression problems.

The OASIS SCHOOL is situated at the children's unit and offers education to som 25 students from first to ninth grade.

INTERNATIONALLY we have worked several years with the late Dr Arnold. P. Goldstein, founder of the CBT intervention ART, Aggression Replacement Training. Read more about ART and the international ART network on ICARTs web page:
www.AggressionReplacementTraining.org

International Contact Information for The Oasis

Rune Nensén, CEO  +46 733 95 12 00 rune.nensen@oasen.com
Garbis H. Sarafian, Administrator +46 733 95 12 01 garbis.sarafian@oasen.com

The Oasis Residential Center
P.O. Box 199
578 24 Aneby
SWEDEN

Phone: +46 380 472 00
Fax: +46 380 418 11
E-mail: info@oasen.com
Internet: www.oasen.com


The Operation - a vision

At the Oasis Children's Home the child is at the centre of attention.The Oasis is to have a leading role in care quality and methods development and is to be an exemplary employer of a competent and committed staff.The Oasis is to be the obvious choice for the Social Services when it comes to assessment and treatment of children and families.

The Oasis concept

The Oasis is to meet, with social, psychiatric, medical and psychological specialist competence, the social services' needs of complete and integrated assessments, structured and all-round treatment plus comprehensive high quality schooling.

Organization

The Oasis Residential Center is a limited company. The members of the board are skilled professionals and have backgrounds in economics, psychology, psychiatry, social services and health care.

The Oasis family unit

The unit's catchment area is primarily the south of Sweden . Admission is based on the Social Services Act (Socialtjänstlagen) or the Youth Care Act (LUV). Applications should be directed to the Head of Unit who decides on enrolment and discharging. Please contact Head of Unit AnnaKarin Roslund, telephone +46-(0)380-472 05.

At the Family Unit it is possible for the children to stay with their parents who need support and help in their parents' role. In this way complete separation is avoided and it becomes possible to observe the interaction between children and adults. Mentally retarded mothers can have support during pregnancy and at the birth of their child. Awaiting suitable permanent placing the Oasis can help with assessment/observation of children and/or parents.

The Family Unit is to a certain extent adapted to disabled clients. Eating, accommodation and daily activities all take place on the ground floor so that wheel chairs have easy entry. A handicap toilet is available in a corridor. Those who wish/need a toilet of their own may have to wait. There is a limited number of rooms with en suite toilets but they are in high demand. There is a handicap lift to the first floor where social workers, child psychologists and doctors have their rooms. The Oasis has a mini bus, without ramp but with plenty of room for a folded wheel chair. Furthermore the Oasis can provide a personal assistant when necessary and by agreement.

Assessment/Treatment

An individual assessment and treatment plan is worked out for every family/child. A holistic (comprehensive) view of man permeates the entire organization, the assessment and treatment work as well as the composition of the staff. The assessment and treatment work rests on a psychodynamic basis. Beside assessment and therapeutical talks and observations etc., environmental therapy and Aggression Replacement Training (ART) are important elements of the treatment.

The assessment and treatment work is planned and carried out in teams. The teams consist of social workers, qualified nurses, doctors with specialist competence in psychiatry, psychologists and pre-school teachers alongside the regular Oasis treatment staff, all of which makes it possible to work out the assessments from a social, medical, psychiatric as well as from a child psychological perspective.

Everyday life at the Oasis has components that bring insights, profound changes and development to those involved.

The Oasis makes assessments/reports of children without parents and of parents/child placings. Assessments can be made from a social, psychiatric as well as from a medical point of view. Reports from pre-school teachers are annexed to the assessment. The assessment can also be supplemented with a report from a child psychologist. Assessment time is 3-6 months.

There is continuous cooperation with staff from the Social Services, from child and youth psychiatry and from the maternal welfare. The Oasis receives emergency placings of children and of parents with children. (After-hours telephone numbers to the:Oasis: 0380-472 00, 472 48, 472 05.)

Treatment conferences at regular intervals are an important work component and a prerequisite for the treatment time at the Oasis to be planned in the most suitable way possible, so that the training can be followed up at home or at the family home after the stay at the Oasis is over. There are training flats in connection with the Oasis Family Unit. The Oasis is prepared to help their clients during the settling-in period in a family home.

Assessment

An individual assessment and treatment plan is made for every child and/or family. The holistic (comprehensive) view of man permeates the entire organization, in assessment and treatment ass well as in the composition of staff. The assessment and treatment work rests on a psychodynamic basis. Beside assessment and therapeutical talks and observations etc., environmental therapy and Aggression Replacement Training (ART) are important elements of the treatment. The three main components of ART are social skills training, anger control and moral development and maturity.

Aggression Replacement Training, ART

As an introduction to the ART method he Oasis recommends an article in Word format: "ART - en lovande metod med brett användningsområde".

You can read the file "artikel.doc" (57 kb) in Word or open it in your web browser. The article is by Martin Lardén and Bengt Daleflod, the National Board of Institutional Care. The ART method was created by professor Arnold P.Goldstein. The method comprises three parts:

Skills training

The social skills training comprises fifty different social skills. The skills are trained in class once a week and during daily activities several times a day. Social skills training is good for everyone at the Oasis. It leads to better communication between staff and clients.

Anger control training

Anger control training is about learning self-control, above all to be able to control unnecessary fits of anger and violence. "Low-key aggressiveness" is an expression used at the Oasis meaning that it is important to observe very closely any signals from students and adults that cannot be immediately interpreted as outbursts or disruptive behaviour but can turn out to be a hotbed for more serious conflicts later. This kind of behaviour can be observed at sports or when children are at play and one tries to teach the children that there are alternatives to negative behaviour that can lead to bigger conflicts. Again it is all about communication between people, for example learning to express dissatisfaction without losing one's self-control.

Moral reasoning

The treatment programme for anti-social children must have a moral component in order to be effective. Moral training aims at influencing the children's ethical and moral values. Children and young people want to live in a world without violence, just like everybody else. A world where people have respect for and care about each other. A disturbingly large percentage of anti-social young people have no real comprehension of why honesty and respect for other people's property is important. This is why there is a need for moral training, which in its turn will make it easier for the clients to learn the message of the other ART components.

ART at the Oasis

At the Oasis the ART treatment method is used in a structured way. The method is straightforward and in many ways quite natural. It's a question of replacing negative reactions and acts with alternative and more effective behaviour.

At the Family Unit, ART training is applied both in assessment and treatment. All treatment aims at giving the clients new and improved chances to understand themselves and the world around them. By continuous daily observation and talks with children and parents it is possible to map the family's/individual's problem areas. These observations become the basis of guidelines for the continued ART training throughout the rest of the clients' stay. The training takes place in groups of about 6-8 persons who have plenty of time to discuss the new skills which have been introduced. Most of the training, however, is devoted to role playing where each player has a chance to practise new forms of positive behaviour. The instructor's role is to model new skills and to actively strengthen skills that the clients have acquired already. At the Family Unit the clients can be children, groups of parents and whole families.

ART contributes, in conjunction with different types of social strengtheners, to a quick, clear and concrete change for the better in the behaviour of the children staying at the Oasis Children's Unit, Karlsborg. Many children, who for example have a history of frequent fits of rage, make substantial progress after a period of ART training.

Our staff can verify that a majority of these children have fewer and fewer and less intense fits of rage. Check list help in measuring improvements in the child's social skills. The child's language is another thing that improves with time. Swearwords and obscene language are heard less often. Instead the children learn alternative modes of expression. The word 'respect' is one such word that the children start using in situations where they want to express irritation about something.

Here are some examples of skills students learn and practise in connection with ART:

•  How to make eye contact in different social situations.
•  How to get better at exchanging thoughts and feelings with other people.
•  How to increase awareness of their own feelings and how to express them.
•  How better to understand other people's feelings in different situations.
•  How to handle stress.
•  How to handle irritation.

Token  economy

ART just as every other activity at the Children's home, is also coupled to a motivation system called sign economy. This is a system devised to encourage and strengthen desirable behaviour. It is based on the assumption that behaviour primarily is controlled by its immediate consequences, and if you can change the consequences you can also influence your behaviour. In sign economy the players receive immediate feedback and signs in the form of points when they act in a desirable way. In sign economy it is important that rules and expectations be clear and specific instead of indistinct and elastic.

Generalizing

Generalizing means that the Children's Unit cooperates with the parents and other networks so that everybody is aware of what the children are supposed to learn from the treatment. Thus our staff can make home visits or parents and contact persons can come to the Children's Unit in order to work alongside the children. This helps to make the results of the treatment last longer after leaving the Oasis. At the Oasis Children's Unit we have worked with ART since 1998. ART is used in full, i.e. including all the three main components, but also with the components to be found in the PREPARE programme.
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Child groups

Oasis school children take part in ART lessons twice a week in order to practise the various components of ART coupled to different exercises aimed at strengthening empathy and the ability to cooperate. The anger control training follows a 10-week programme that runs parallel with the social skills training. New skills are defined and modelled by the instructors during the social skills training in order to make it easier for the children understand clearly how to use them. Role playing takes up a considerable part of the lessons. That's when the children get to practise their new skills in situations drawn from their own everyday life. The role playing sessions are followed up by positive feedback from the group and the instructor. It's also a part of the instructor's job to point out what needs improving. The moral training helps the children to think through their values, often when confronted by amoral dilemma that has to be solved. Being part of a group helps the children handle different situations and develop a more mature way of thinking.

Parent groups

Parents usually start their ART training the week after they have arrived. They then participate until they are discharged. The ART class is taught once a week by two ART instructors. In these classes everyday situations are used for discussions, skills training and role playing. The members of the group contribute by suggesting possible solutions to the problems under discussion. Examples of such problems are aggressive confrontations with their children and fear of violence or drugs. Parents can many times support of each other in difficult situations.

Since children copy their parents it is important that the parents too have ART training. Role playing is always followed up by feedback in the form of constructive and positive criticism aimed at personal growth and maturity. Empathy training and relaxation exercises are also part of the parents programme.

Family groups

Since whole families are sometimes placed at the Oasis it is often possible to work with a family as a group of its own. Here work is concentrated both on testing and establishing the family's capacity for learning new behaviour patterns, and on focusing attention on the family's strong and weak sides. The ART instructors use check lists where parents try to estimate their own and their children's social skills. From this a behaviour analysis can be made that enables the instructor to come up with a tailor-made study plan that meets both needs and requirements.

The great advantage of training the whole family together lies in the fact that any change in behaviour is less easily forgotten once the family has left the Oasis. Also children tend to be more motivated when their parent decide to take part in ART.

Nursery school

Every morning the children at the Oasis nursery school have ample opportunity to process, within the frames of a structured activity, their different experiences. Daily observations documented by pre-school teachers contribute to focus on the children's situations and needs in the assessments.

A pre-school group is usually made up of 5-7 children. The groups change size as new children arrive or old ones are discharged. Often a group stays intact forquite long periods, though. The fact that groups are small helps staff to observe and focus on each child. A clear structure with well defined frames makes the child feel safe. Once this basis is established it becomes easier to help the children develop and strengthen their often very poor self-image and at the same time install some understanding of their own situation in life.

Here the children get to meet other children with similar backgrounds and experiences. The ART treatment method is beginning to have a great influence on pre-school life, too.

These are the nursery school staff: Katarina Strindeman, pre-schol teacher, and Kita Björk, recreation instructor. Both have many years experience working with children.

The Oasis School

At the Children's Unit's school the children work in a small group with many adults present. The group is made up of 8-12 students. The staff consists of one teacher and three treatment assistants. This makes it possible for all students to have their individual needs provided for. The school participates in the assessment and treatment process by taking part in treatment conferences and by writing detailed reports.

Each student has an individual educational treatment plan. The Karlsborg school is run in cooperation with the municipality of Aneby. The school follows Curriculum 94 for the nine-year compulsory school. The students work as one group, in smaller groups or individually.

Time is set aside for each student to have an opportunity to be taught individually. All students have regular weekly talks with a teacher or an assistant at which the student's school situation is analysed and discussed by both parties.

The school's closeness to nature gives the students a chance to experience and learn from nature at close quarter. Hikes in the forest and excursions become a natural part of the students' school life. Music, art and drama play an important part beside the fact-based subjects. The children get to learn how to cooperate and to experience togetherness in a group.

Furthermore the school strives to give the students a good contact with the surrounding world by study visits to museums and other institutions. The school forms a natural part of the treatment at the Children's Unit and thus the ART method becomes an essential element of the student's school life.

Enrolment at the Children's unit 

The Children's Unit's target group is children aged 7-14 with behaviour disorders. The unit's catchment area is primarily the south of Sweden.

Admission has to be based on a decision according to the Social Services Act or LUV (the Youth Care Act). Applications should be directed to the Head of Unit who decides on enrolment and discharging. Please contact Head of Unit Samuel Fransson, telephone +46-(0)380-472 23.


Accommodation at the Children's unit

All children have their own rooms with toilets and showers in the corridor. There are communal areas for recreation and all meals are served in the dining room.

Outdoor activities, games and sports form a natural part of every-day treatment. The Children's Unit provides a wide variety of activities based on the child's needs and interests. Horse-back riding, cyclo-cross, floorball, singing and music training, swimming and hiking are some examples of activities to choose from at Aneby.

Assessment/Treatment at the Children's unit

An individual assessment or treatment plan is worked out for each child in collaboration with the Social Services and the child's parents. This plan is subsequently followed up at regular intervals in cooperation with parents and the Social Services.

The treatment is primarily based on cognitive and behaviour therapeutical theories (CBT) and on environment therapeutical principles. The holistic (comprehensive) view of man permeates all assessment and treatment as well as the composition of the staff involved. Experience shows that the treatment meets the needs of the target group in a satisfactory way.

The most important way for the Oasis to develop and improve its methods since the start has been to make sure that all staff have been trained in the ART method. The Oasis Children's Unit has round-the-clock manning which makes emergency placing possible.

All staff take part in methods training and supervision. A child psychiatrist and a fully qualified psychologist are attached to the Children's Unit in order to detect any possible neuropsychiatric problems.

Quality control

Quality development and control are equally important. Targets are set for all parts of the assessment and treatment work. The results are documented and measured and can be followed up. The entire staff take part in this work, and thanks to their overall competence and to the structured ethical rules of the Oasis service model, clients can be offered qualitatively outstanding assessment and treatment.

Staff

The Oasis staff have solid training and many years' experience of social work - a prerequisite for good assessment and treatment results.

Besides adequate training and previous work experience in the field of social work, great importance is attached to personal qualities when recruiting new staff.

The Oasis staff are continuously being supervised and counselled by national and international psychologists and psychotherapists. In the team-based assessment and treatment work the different team-members complement each as regards competence and age.

The entire staff numbers some 80 persons with a wide variety of training which gives both breadth and edge to our work. Quite a few have long experience of working with children and families. All of them have qualified supervision.
 
Employment and Internships

At the Oasis we recruit new staff regularly. If you are interested in social work and have suitable competence and experience, don't hesitate to contact us. We also regularly host internships.