From Thinking for a Change to ART, an aggression replacement and social skills treatment program, Dr. Barry Glick has devoted his professional career to the development of polices, programs and services for adolescents. As he travels the nation, Dr. Glick teaches others about ART and how it is yielding positive results.  

This week, he brings those teachings to an audience of juvenile services staff in Kansas. Also, attending the weeklong training are Kansas Department of Corrections staff Crystal Trout and Steve Bonner, who previously attended the program. The pair will become local trainers of the ART curriculum to ensure long-term sustainability of the program in Kansas, stated Dr. Glick, who describes the program as changing one life at a time.

Developed in 1987, ART is an intervention dealing with adolescent violence and aggression through the development of new skills, emotion control and the ability to learn from others. Dr. Glick and his team learned that adolescent aggression and violence could not be explained by one single event, but by multiple responses for multiple behaviors. Dr. Glick found that many aggressive youth do not have the skills to respond appropriately, or the emotion control to implement those new skills. Coupled with learning new skills, Dr. Glick wanted to ensure that youth had the ability to see things from another perspective, suggesting that youth engage in a discussion group, debating different topics. Through a controlled debate, adolescents begin to see multiple perspectives, reducing anti-social behaviors and developing moral reasoning. As a result, ART is comprised of three components; structured learning, anger control and moral reasoning. While Dr. Glick states that he did not invent these three components, he indicates that putting them together, integrated and combined through ART, allows for behavior change to begin taking place.

Deputy Secretary of Juvenile Services, Terri Williams addressed the attending staff, discussing the impact of ART.  Closing out Fiscal Year 2016, juvenile services has seen a decline in population; however the reduction in aggressive behavior and incidents has decreased at a faster rate than the population decline.  

Williams states “While we could always improve, ART has been a significant factor in the reduction of aggressive behaviors”.

Aggression Replacement Training, Third Edition – Revised and Expanded Copyright © 2011 by Barry Glick and John C. Gibbs. Aggression Replacement Training ® and ART ® are the registered trademarks of Dr. Barry Click.

To see more photos from the training, please visit the KDOC's Facebook page.

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