Here is the text of the interview with Lisa DeHaven-Jordan, Program Director of Raising Today's Teen.
Please tell me some more about yourself and your position.
I am the Program Director of Raising Today's Teens. My educational background is a Master's Degree in Social Work from the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, and a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology. My professional experience has been in working with families and adolescents, both in family counseling agencies, and in mental health facilities and hospitals. As Program Director for RTT, I am responsible for administering, implementing and overseeing goals of the program.
How long have you had the hotline ?
The RTT Hotline opened up nationally October 6, 1997. Along with that our web site and on-line counseling was opened. In December, we added e-mail counseling ability for those folks who wanted to get assistance via that avenue.
How many parenting counselors are employed by you? What are their qualifications?
At this time we have 8 counselors, besides myself, and our training director. Most of us are parents and have raised teens. We put all of our counselors through a training program consisting of problem-solving techniques, communication skills, and virtually all of the issues facing families with teens in today's society. We have ongoing training on current hot issues and well as expanding on our counselors' knowledge level, and provide an extensive book and video library to our counselors also. We utilize guest speakers, too, from a variety of specialty fields. These guest speakers have expertise in a variety of fields, i.e. eating disorders, teen sexuality, child protective services, law enforcement, etc. All our counselors have excellent backgrounds in the helping professions, one has a Ph.D. in Psychology, another is a psychiatric nurse, and all others have worked in the education or social service fields.
Can you tell us a little more about the Marion Foundation, it's purpose, how and why it got started?
The Marion Foundation is a private, non-profit organization founded by Marion Sue Kauffman in Arizona in 1993. Ms. Kauffman began her service in Arizona by offering a teen talk line called Talkzone. She also offers monetary assistance to schools in Maricopa County with two programs called A.C.E. and Schoolhouse. RTT got started because Ms. Kauffman saw the need for parents of teens to have a place to go to obtain assistance with the everyday problems they face in raising teens in today's society. There are many resources for teens, but few for their parents, and no other hotline with our services offered to them. The main goal of RTT is to foster and strengthen communication and relationships amongst parents, educators, or anyone involved in raising teens, and their teens.
What promped the Marion Foundation to add its hotline to the World Wide Web? How and why did the Raising Today's Teen website get started?
The Web today is a major means of communication. Any organization offering a service on a national basis cannot ignore the Web. Besides the exposure, RTT is able to implement two of its important programs, on-line and e-mail counseling through the Web.
It was always the goal of Ms. Kauffman to start the web site along with the hotline. The Marion Foundation has always had its own very talented group of people who design and support the web site in its entirety. We have all of the equipment necessary to maintain our web site, which includes our own server and T1 lines.
How does the Online Counseling work?
On-line counseling works the same way as our hotline. All of our counselors are proficient in both milieus. They are operated simultaneously, so that a counselor can receive a call through their state- of -the -art phone line, and also have someone come in on the chat rooms. Counselors each have a computer with the web site and our extensive databases with resource information. All of the data we need from our calls is put into the call log on our computers. Depending upon how fast a caller can type, on-line counseling proceeds. The difference in not having a voice attached, is missing the emotional content of the conversation. E-mail counseling works essentially the same way, but is not as fast. Many times people will write in and not give a whole picture. We would need to fill that picture in, in order to give our callers the best help. So this is a process which takes a few days to complete.
What do you see in the future for the Raising Today's Teen website?
RTT also publishes a parent magazine with articles of interest and variety to those raising teens. In the future we are considering other avenues to reach out to parents within communities around the U.S. and possibly a chat room for parents to "speak" directly to other parents. We are currently brainstorming new ways to both promote and expand our services.
