Services

Meet Ascent 121 and See Its Survivor-Centered Services

Using best practices with a continuum of care, Ascent 121 provides trauma-informed therapeutic services that are survivor-centered and strengths-based. Survivors of commercial sexual exploitation present with unique needs for clinical support, where continuity is vital. Successful intervention requires both rapid and long-term interventions to help teens resist eloping or returning to their previous behavior. Much like domestic violence or substance abuse, relapse is an anticipated component of recovery.

Ascent 121 programs provide a continuum of care that allows clients to move back and forth between program settings throughout their treatment process. Our continuum utilizes a multiphase treatment approach that can be provided in multiple settings, allowing us to provide comprehensive treatment in the least restrictive setting as determined by individual risk and need. Ascent 121 staff are equipped with specialized training and supervision by experts across the country. Our continuum is comprised of four components: assessment, community-based therapy, residential programming, and case management.

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Our Services

Therapeutic Residential Placement

Ascent 121 joined forces with Lutheran Child & Family Services (LCFS) in 2014 to launch the Impact Program. Using best practices, we provide comprehensive residential services for teen girls with a history of commercial sexual exploitation and/or human trafficking. Clinical services are trauma-informed and strengths-based, using best practice service standards. Impact is available to girls between the ages of 12 and 18.

Click here to learn more.

Therapeutic Residential Placement

Home-Based Therapy

These services take place primarily in the home and include both individual and family therapy. The intensity of therapy varies based on individual risk and need, with ongoing assessment of progress. Clinicians focus on complex trauma, risk reduction, awareness, family cohesion, attachment, self-sufficiency, as well as other treatment targets identified by individual need. Safety plans, case coordination, and network referrals are standard practices. All clinicians are masters level professionals with training in both trauma-informed care and commercial sexual exploitation of youth. Evidence-based practices utilized include Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TFCBT), Ecological Based Family Therapy (EBFT), Motivational Interviewing (MI), and Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). All services are strengths-based and intrinsically motivated.

The Ascent121 treatment program addresses service implementation through understanding the exploitation process and the unique vulnerability of each individual we work with. The purpose of the treatment program is to help the survivors find and strengthen personal values, utilize strengths, develop potential strengths, and resolve symptoms. While reducing symptoms is critical, the program seeks to help the youth learn to identify and express their values and strengths in a manner that sustains their goals and desires in life, so that treatment success is intrinsically motivated. The program reflects the belief that all humans have the capacity to build resiliency, especially when provided resources, support, and an environment supportive of the changer. Helping survivors identify their strengths is essential to sustained success once interventions stop.

Home-Based Therapy

Evaluation and Assessment

Ascent 121 provides comprehensive trauma assessments for youth with a confirmed history of CSE/HT or those who present with risks of such. These assessments may take place anywhere in the community, including shelter care or residential facilities other than our IMPACT Program. While there are multiple types of assessments, Ascent 121 referrals from DCS should always be made for “Trauma Assessment”. Our team utilizes The Commercial Sexual Exploitation Needs Instrument—3rd Edition. This instrument is an internally developed structured clinical decision-making tool to identify critical treatment needs related to youth engaging in elopement and experiencing commercial sexual exploitation (CSE). The tool manages the risk of elopement and identifies treatment goals aimed at reducing future elopements and involvement in commercial sexual exploitation. The instrument specifically assesses:

  • The level of restrictiveness that youth may need to successfully engage in treatment;
  • The treatment needs of the youth-related to elopement and CSE, while recognizing that additional treatment needs may be present that are not included in the Instrument;
  • The intensity of treatment for 19 identified needs;
  • The priority of those 19 identified treatment needs;
  • Progress in the treatment of nonhistorical, or dynamic, needs among the 19 needs during treatment.

It is noteworthy that this Instrument has been in development for 9 years and is the first of its kind in the country. It is currently being reviewed to establish reliability and validity in partnership with the University of Indianapolis and other specialty CSE providers across Indiana.

Evaluation and Assessment

2 Gen Family Preservation Services

FPS is a uniquely comprehensive 2 Gen service model, designed to keep families intact. Only youth who are Indiana in-home CHINS status may qualify. Services include weekly in-home safety checks, emergency discretionary fund disbursement, supplemental therapeutic services, case management, soft skill development and workforce pathways as defined by individual needs. Services are initiated in the home within 72-hours of referral. The family will receive a comprehensive assessment targeting areas of safety, financial security, and family unit strengths, risks, and needs. From there, a service delivery plan will be established with the family. Service delivery includes one of the following best practice models: EBFT, MI, or TF-CBT.

2 Gen Family Preservation Services

Case Management & Workforce Pathways

Survivors of trafficking and exploitation often operate from a mode of survival. Strongly developed survival skills provide numerous strengths that serve the kids. However, those skills can also take a toll on their ability to plan and execute daily life and can keep them from functioning in an organized, effective, and low-stress manner.

At Ascent 121, case management services and workforce pathways are provided at our office, at the clients’ homes, and at other locations throughout the community. Using a combination of internally and externally developed curricula and materials, we take a psycho-educational approach to teaching soft skills such as dealing with feelings, reducing stress, and executive functioning. Clients are provided with opportunities to learn, develop and practice these skills in a variety of settings while receiving performance feedback. Experiential activities are also used to teach vocation, proactivity, problem-solving, communication, collaboration and generalization capacity in a nonthreatening manner while expanding multiple senses for a deeper and more integrated learning experience.

Case management often includes connecting youth and families to resources within their community with the goal of increasing independence and autonomy.

Case Management & Soft Skills

Group Therapy

Ascent 121 provides group therapies in residential, community, office-based settings, and virtual settings. Group member selection and eligibility may vary over time and are established by considering the risks and strengths of candidates to promote as much heterogeneity as possible. This method helps to reduce unhealthy exposure to CSE for more vulnerable youth which may actually elevate the risk. Youth who are at risk of CSE are rarely included in groups with youth who have an established history of CSE and/or an established street network. Groups provided include a number of internally and externally developed curricula, including but not limited to the following:

  • Reclaiming the Me I am Meant to Be
  • My Life My Choice
  • Bodies Are Not Commodities
  • Survivors Guide to Money
  • Seeking Safety
  • Roadmap to Redemption
Group Therapy

Intensive Family Therapy

Family therapy is a central component to the Ascent 121 continuum of care. We recognize that family (both traditional and non) is the greatest protective factor for youth. Family therapy is done both in the home and in our facilities. The initial family component of the Ascent 121 program includes three initial elements occurring in the first two weeks of services: introduction to Ascent 121, identification of family resilience, and management of crisis at the time of entry into the program. We use a variety of evidence practice models such as Motivational Interviewing, Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Ecological Based Family Therapy.

Intensive Family Therapy

Peer Mentoring

Ascent 121 understands that treatment interventions include a wide variety of strategies to empower survivors and support the clients' search to regain personal power, realize a sense of personal integrity, establish healthy connections with those who care for them, and engage in a social network that will support their personal growth. Critical to survivors’ success in treatment is not just relieving clinical symptoms, but also helping to create an integrated sense of self and community. Beyond clinical interventions, our programmatic approach includes mentoring by a qualified peer who can help bolster the clinical skills, techniques, and psycho-education through real-world application in the context of a healthy, safe relationship.

Peer Mentoring

Equine Therapy

Survivors of violence and exploitation often experience symptoms of insecurity, difficulty with problem-solving, dysregulated mood, mistrust of self and others, and high anxiety with regard to their economic future. Equine-assisted therapy has been shown to increase self-esteem, improve self-efficacy, and lower anxiety. Ascent 121 partners with Agape Therapeutic Riding to provide group and individual equine therapy to youth served. Through these services, youth often report an increased ability to trust, a stronger sense of empowerment, increased capacity to generalize treatment concepts, a stronger appreciation for teamwork and cohesion, and increased empathy. Each group is run with one facilitator from Agape and one facilitator from Ascent 121.

Equine Therapy

Sensorimotor Work

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (championed by Pat Ogden) is a therapeutic modality for trauma and attachment issues, considering the body as an integral source of information that can guide resourcing and the accessing and processing of challenging, traumatic, and developmental experiences. It includes somatic, emotional, and cognitive processing and integration. Because victims and survivors of CSE and trafficking experience such a high level of somatic dissociation, Ascent 121 has found that sensorimotor work is often instrumental in affect regulation, grounding, and trauma processing. We have a fully outfitted sensory room, equipped with an array of specific tools intended to activate each of the senses: auditory (sound), visual (sight), olfactory (smell), tactile (touch), and gustatory, (taste), and proprioception (motion).

Sensorimotor Work

Experiential Therapy

Ascent 121 staff utilize an array of pre-outlined and internally developed experiential activities in both individual and family therapy services. These include elements such as wilderness activities, trauma narrative work, role-playing, skill practice, and development in the community, dance, and drama. Experiential therapy teaches proactivity, problem-solving, and generalization capacity in a nonthreatening manner. It often expands multiple senses for a deeper and more integrated learning experience than talk therapy may provide. It is often used as a supplement to talk therapy, though in some cases and with supervisor agreement, it may act as a replacement as well.

Experiential Therapy

Spirituality

Youth in Ascent 121 programs are given opportunities to explore their faith and learn more about scripture. Additional opportunities sometimes include church attendance or baptism. Religious choice and autonomy are valued. Youth often present with a wide array of questions and feelings about God based on the complexity of their past experiences. Because individuals who have experienced coercive bonding are especially vulnerable to outside influence, staff structure studies in a manner that encourages youth to ask questions and explore different interpretations of scripture. In this way, youth begin to develop their own belief systems, rather than merely adopting and parroting the belief systems of others.

Spirituality

Art Therapy

Ascent 121 has a fully outfitted art therapy space and certified art therapists on staff.  The use of art therapy to treat trauma has been well documented provides specific benefits for young people who have experienced trauma, including sexual exploitation. Young people may lack the words to describe their traumatic experiences and may be better able to process their trauma through the creation of artwork. In addition, art making can help young people to explore, learn about themselves, develop their self-esteem, experience mastery, and express strong emotions. When the young person is someone who has experienced significant and chronic sexual trauma, the development of these capacities is essential, yet often difficult to accomplish.

Art Therapy

Financial Literacy Programming

Utilizing the Survivor's Guide to Money workbook through the Avery Center as its foundation, Ascent 121 is in the process of building a financial literacy program that will understand address the following concepts: financial abuse, financial planning, cost-benefit analysis of tax-free lifestyles, boundaries, identity, and personal relationship with money as it relates to safety, security and worth. It is the intended goal to provide hands-on and experiential activities to allow clients to role-play various scenarios involving financial planning.

Financial Literacy Programming

Substance Abuse Treatment

There is a strong intersection between human trafficking and substance abuse. Not only are substances often utilized in the grooming process, but they are also used as a tool for manipulation, coercion and/or control. Victims often rely on substances as a means of self-medicating and survival, which results in a high prevalence of addiction. Ascent 121 has incorporated specific substance abuse measures into its assessment methods. While we utilize Seeking Safety (an evidenced-based treatment modality designed to address both substance abuse and trauma), we also rely on relationships with specialty providers in the area, including but not limited to: Dove Recovery House, Rueben Engagement Center, Hope Academy and Fairbanks.

Substance Abuse Treatment

Referrals

Referrals and inquiries should be sent to [email protected]. Our staff will review each case and provide a response within 24-hours. Ascent 121 is specialized in working with trafficked and exploited youth (and youth at risk of such). Due to heavy demand and a gap in specialized service providers across the state, we are unable to accept referrals outside our target population.

We request any of the following supporting documentation available: 310/311 reports, Probable Cause Affidavit, Preliminary Inquiry, Probable Cause Affidavit, Predisposition Report, Previous outpatient or placement records, Prior Psychological Testing, detailed summary of trafficking risks or concerns.

Meet Ascent 121