Adolescents

Excerpted from Part 4: Special Issues - TAPP-C: Clinician’s Manual for Preventing and Treating Juvenile Fire Involvement.

While we have indicated that this manual is perhaps better suited for use with school-aged children, our experience over the years has shown that the intervention methods outlined are also useful and quite successful for adolescents as well. However, several considerations need to be made when working with adolescents.

Considerations

Clinical issues that distinguish adolescents from children often include adolescents’ greater resistance to intervention, their level of maturity and need for independence, less stringent supervision, greater access to fire materials outside of the home, peer influences and peer pressure, and opportunity to smoke and subsequent need to carry matches and lighters.

Furthermore, it is important to note that many adolescents with histories of fire involvement also exhibit other antisocial behaviours and have had some contact with the legal system.

Intervention modifications

In contrast to younger children, adolescents seem initially to be more resistant to intervention. However, ensuring the following general steps are taken often helps to reduce the adolescent’s reluctance to participate in the program and motivates them to alter their fire-related behaviour:

1. Make sure that they understand that the interventions are not punishments and can actually help keep them out of trouble in the future.
2. Identify individual motivators to eliminate fire involvement.
3. Ensure that specific intervention strategies and case examples are relevant to them.
4. Establish a collaborative relationship with them, encouraging their input and direction regarding the course of treatment.

Given that adolescents are typically granted more freedom, supervised less often, and have greater access to fire materials than children, it is particularly important to have the adolescents motivated to change their fire-related behaviour.

Engaging the adolescent in treatment may present some challenges. While getting acquainted with the youth during the initial portions of the program, the clinician should attempt to identify key motivators for their adolescent client. For instance, many teenagers are tired of getting into trouble for their behaviour, and wish to avoid (further) contact with the law. Others are motivated to keep themselves or family members safe. The first, and often the most difficult, step in working with adolescents involved with fire is to help them understand that altering their fire-related behaviour may help them achieve certain goals (such as staying out of trouble).

The clinician will want to adapt the SNAP™ program for use with older and more mature individuals. For instance, a greater focus on problem-solving strategies may be more applicable to adolescents. Hypothetical vignettes presented to adolescents to practise problem-solving skills during sessions should be relevant to the individual adolescent and his or her life experiences.

Scenarios may include situations involving peers and the social pressure to participate in fire involvement within a group, how to handle the wider access to fire materials outside of the home (e.g., in stores), and issues inherent to smoking cigarettes (e.g., asking for someone to light their cigarette or to borrow a lighter rather than carry one).

It is important to encourage adolescents’ input on intervention suggestions throughout treatment, and to work collaboratively with them. For instance, if an adolescent indicates that a specific intervention is not realistic, or he or she disagrees with a recommendation, it is imperative to explore this with him or her.

A common complaint from adolescents who smoke is the recommendation that they refrain from carrying matches or lighters to light their cigarettes. They often report this is an excessive and unnecessary limitation. A strategy that has met with some success is to have the adolescents see how this restriction could actually work for them. For instance, many of these youth report being frustrated in the past for being blamed for offences they did not commit. They also recognize that they are likely to become a suspect for any future fire-related offence given their fire history. Inform them that if they never carry matches or lighters (and refrain from other fire involvement), they are less likely to be blamed for future fire-related transgressions in their neighbourhood.

Ultimately, you as the clinician may feel strongly about a particular recommendation to which the adolescent remains opposed, but it is important that the adolescent has a voice in his or her treatment and feels listened to and respected.

It is often appropriate to allow older youth some involvement with sanctioned fire-related practices. Clinical judgment will determine the extent of supervision needed for such fire contact. Some common examples are adolescents helping to safely start a campfire with caregiver supervision, or cooking using a stove or barbecue. Such appropriate fire-related activities should be planned and agreed upon by the caregiver.

For families with an adolescent involved with fire, working directly with the youth is vital for behavioural change. However, it remains important to also involve the youth’s caregiver in treatment. Although some caregivers report having little control over their teen’s behaviour and access to fire materials outside of the home, they can still convey the message that fire involvement is a serious matter, and that fire safety is an important family goal.

Furthermore, when working with caregivers who indicate being unable to supervise their teenager because he or she will not comply with parental requests (e.g., to stay in or near the home or to check in regularly with the caregivers when in the community unsupervised), it is important to explore this problem with the caregiver. When caregivers report that their child or teenager leaves the home without permission (or without the caregiver’s knowledge), it often indicates that further help is needed for this very important issue. For instance, the clinician may be able to elicit support from probation services (if involved with the youth), child welfare agencies or, if necessary, the local police, to help caregivers maintain their teenager’s safety and ensure that either the teen is being supervised or that his or her whereabouts are being monitored by the caregiver or another appropriate adult.

It is particularly important to review the limits of confidentiality with adolescents at the outset of each session so that they understand that information given by them may be shared with their caregivers.

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