Program gives troubled teens new life skills Youths will learn anger management, ways to handle conflict BY LINDA DeNICOLA Staff Writer Prevention First, located in Ocean Township, has a strong mission. The nonprofit agency is dedicated to strengthening the foundations of children and families by empowering them to successfully handle difficult everyday life situations and extraordinary challenges such as violence and substance abuse. One of the ways in which they do that is through an anger management program called Keys to Innervisions (KIV), which provides life skills education for adolescents. The program, which is scheduled to start at the end of this month or early in February, is designed to teach 13- to 16-year-olds how to resolve conflict and shape the development of healthy beliefs and clear standards for behavior. Marilyn Kinelski, coordinator of adolescent services at Prevention First, explained that juvenile offenders will be referred to the program by juvenile conference committees, intake service conferences and/or a juvenile referee. The youths will be individually assessed prior to the start of small group meetings where they will learn coping tools. Kinelski believes that the KIV program provides powerful tools for young people in trouble. It provides them with the tools they need to resolve conflict and maintain a positive temperament, she said, adding that they need to develop healthy beliefs and clear standards of behavior. She explained that the agency has run this program before, with people from within the agency who have been trained to provide the program, but this time they are hiring consultants to provide the educational program. “There will be two consultants managing the group and about 48 juvenile participants. The participants will be learning about healthy ways to deal with anger, ways that they can avoid confrontation and further incarceration,” she said. The program will last four weeks, with an initial assessment and three, two-hour group sessions, each about two hours long. She explained that there will be multiple efforts taking place at the same time. While the teenagers are in their sessions, their parents will be meeting in separate rooms. “The parents who volunteer for the program, will receive a curriculum designed to help them with parenting skills and anger management,” she said. Three neighboring towns are involved with the KIV program: Asbury Park, Long Branch and Neptune Township. Co-sponsors of the program and locations where the program is to be offered include: the Prevention First Training Institute, Ocean Township; First United Methodist Church, Asbury Park; Old First United Methodist Church, West Long Branch; Neptune West Grove United Methodist Church, Neptune; and the Coastal Monmouth Alliance for the Prevention of Substance Abuse, 279 Broadway, Long Branch. According to Kinelski, Prevention First has been at the present Ocean Township location at 1405 Route 35 north for the past three years, but the agency is almost 40 years old. It provides training rooms that are available to businesses and community groups and a free resource center available to the public with information on a variety of topics including alcohol, tobacco and other drugs. The KIV program is funded through a Monmouth County Board of Chosen Freeholders Youth Services Commission grant in the amount of $50,000. The grant was specifically given for Prevention First to establish a Family Court diversion program that provides adolescent anger management and alcohol and drug abuse early intervention/education services. For information, contact the coordinator of adolescent services at Prevention First at (732) 663-1800, ext. 238.