Our mission is to empower teenagers, young adults, and their families to make and sustain positive changes through prevention, intervention, and life skills services.
Former Vermont Governor Jim Douglas signs H.449 into law, raising the age limit of youth in foster care from 18 to 21 in Spectrum’s Drop-In Center in 2007.
Detail Works is a social enterprise designed to help young people build the soft skills and trade skills they need in the workplace.
Here’s the scene: a teenager is using drugs or alcohol. They get caught. They’re sent—by their parents or school, or by a court—to treatment, which can be an outpatient counseling program like Riverstone. Often, parents and schools want to see drug-free kids, but this abstinence-only model isn’t proven to be successful. “It usually leads to …
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The addition of Riverstone adds a youth-focused counseling program to Spectrum’s wide range of services. Open to the public, Riverstone counselors are trained clinical mental health/social workers and substance abuse counselors who focus on a client-centered approach to help teenagers and young adults work through and overcome mental health and substance use issues.
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Our executive director recently received a note from a mom whose son is consumed with his addiction. “I myself feel very guilty and a failure as parent because I knew this could happen to him. I talked to him about it several times…” she wrote. “But talking and a good family weren’t enough.” You can read Mark’s response in the …
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This spring, the Associated Press Stylebook removed the word “addict” as a noun. This change is important for humanizing people with drug addictions. “When you call someone an addict, it reduces them to just that,” said Mark Redmond, our ED. “But it’s just one element of their being — they’re a mother or a brother …
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When five Spectrum staff members came to us and said they wanted to do the Sleep Out, we weren’t going to say no. But we had to ask — why would staff want to do the Sleep Out when they’re here day in and day out already?
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