Contextual Factors Retreat

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There were several contextual factors that impacted the retreat. A majority of the participants attend LINKS activities because their foster parents tell them that they are going. LINKS is not a mandatory service, but I believe that some of the youth likely feel that it is. Because this trip was labeled as a retreat at a beach house in which the youth were being picked up early from school, many of the participants seemed excited leading up to the event. On the Friday of the trip, we picked up the youth from school around noon. The temperature was below freezing and it was sleeting. I believe the weather impacted a majority of the participants’ moods over the weekend, as it was also cold and rainy on Saturday, then sunny, but cold and extremely windy on Sunday. The youth were disappointed with the weather, because they were unable to enjoy the beach. I noticed that the participants’ energy levels dropped after the battleship tour, which I …show more content…

The environment throughout the weekend could be described as chaotic, crowded, and loud. As previously mentioned, this group had four of the youth had low IQs and two had well documented behavioral issues. Without knowing the fully histories of the participants, I knew of at least two youth who had been hospitalized for suicidal behaviors. Three of the young women have acted out sexually towards boys and men of all ages. This is all to say that this was a complex group and each of the youth had varying levels of need, and they required a lot of supervision. The focus on supervision takes away from the leader’s ability to utilize the necessary therapeutic factors. Thinking about this helped me to be more empathetic towards the youth who were arguing with one another. If I was not able to effectively intervene, how could I expect my group to behave in a way that I was unable to support in

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