Our Mission
To provide skills for special educators, counselors, psychologists, juvenile justice staff, child care workers and others who work with troubled and troubling children and youth to enable them to prevent and resolve crises, to build good relationships with challenging youth, and to help them learn to change repetitive patterns of self-defeating behavior.
How Does LSCI Help?
LSCI teaches staff the therapeutic talking strategies they will need to help children during stressful moments, as well as the awareness and skills to understand and manage their own feelings and counter-aggressive tendencies when intervening with aggressive or out-of-control behaviors. LSCI believes that the process of helping involves having the ability to listen deeply to the personal stories of children and youth and to recognize that their message often is not in their words but in their underlying thoughts and feelings. The real strength of the LSCI program is its emphasis on teaching, and practicing specific interviewing techniques to help staff and students debrief a problem situation or critical event.
What Are the Goals of LSCI?
One of the key elements of LSCI is the development of trust between the staff and the student. When confronted with a crisis, the adult must be the mediator between the student in stress, the student's behavior, the reactions of others, and the private world of feelings that students are sometimes unable to handle without help. In the LSCI model, children and youth in crisis:
- are valued and treated with respect
- learn to trust caring adults and use them for support in times of crisis
- become aware of their patterns of self-defeating behavior
- acquire strength-based social skills
- learn to accept responsibility for inappropriate actions
LSCI provides specific strategies for children and youth who:
- escalate incidents into no-win power struggles
- distort reality
- are self-abusive
- engage in destructive peer relationships
- lack social skills
- show little conscience for aggressive behavior
Background and Development of LSCI
Life Space Crisis Intervention grew from the creative contributions of Redl and Wineman's theory of Life Space Interviewing (LSI) developed for treatment of delinquent youth in the 1950s. They were the first to document using crisis as a core therapeutic component of treatment. To accomplish this goal, they trained the staff who spent the most time with the youths to use LSI during a crisis and to become central professional members of the treatment team. The interest in LSI grew, gaining key contributors who shaped the concepts for broad applications across a variety of settings.
William Morse and Nicholas Long brought LSI into the schools where the skills are essential as students increasingly bring intense emotions into the classroom. Mary Wood integrated LSI into Developmental Therapy-Teaching and with Nicholas Long, authored the first textbook, Life Space Intervention in 1992. In the same year, Nicholas Long and Frank Fecser took the next step and developed a certified program in LSCI, creating the professional structure and standards for future training.
This training program also involved making some refinements and modifications to LSI theory to facilitate teaching this model: the name was changed from "Life Space Interviewing," which was too restrictive a term to "Life Space Crisis Intervention," which was more inclusive of other therapeutic methods now incorporated with the psycho-educational model.
In 1996, Long and Fecser produced a video series, Life Space Crisis Intervention which shows the concepts being used in real-life crisis situations. A second edition of the textbook, Life Space Crisis Intervention; Talking With Students in Conflict, authored in 2001 by Long, Wood, and Fecser, brings LSCI into the new millennium.
Today, more than 30,000 professionals working with troubled and troubling children and youth have been trained and certified in LSCI by the Life Space Crisis Intervention Institute. Seminars are conducted throughout the United State and in Germany, Scotland, Belgium, Norway, South Africa, and Australia.
Founders
Dr. Nicholas J. Long
For over five decades, Dr. Nicholas J. Long has held leadership positions in psychiatric research hospitals, schools, mental health centers and universities, and continues to contribute to the knowledge base in special education and mental health. Throughout his career, he made a point of working directly with children, serving as a model and coach for his graduate students. Dr. Long has published major works in special education and psychology, and while at American University, developed and directed the Rose School, the first interagency treatment program for seriously emotionally disturbed students who were excluded from the D.C. Public Schools. Rose School received recognition as a national service model by the Children’s Defense League and was honored in the Congressional Record.
In 1988, Dr. Long founded the Life Space Crisis Intervention (LSCI) Institute in order to train professionals in effective, strength-based approaches to working with seriously emotionally disturbed children and youth. Today, there are national training sites nationwide. Dr. Long’s work has been published in several languages, and professionals in four continents have benefited from his insights into the minds and hearts of troubled and troubling children and youth.
Frank A. Fecser, Ph.D.
Frank A. Fecser is the Chief Executive Officer of Positive Education Program (PEP), a multi-service, special education and mental health program serving over 3,000 children, youth, and families throughout Greater Cleveland. During his career, Dr. Fecser has held a number of direct service and administrative positions including classroom teacher, case manager, building administrator, and quality assurance director. He has provided training and consultation to many programs in the U.S., and has authored articles and monographs on positive approaches to working with troubled and troubling children and youth. He is a contributing editor for Reclaiming Children and Youth. With Dr. Nicholas Long, he co-founded the Life Space Crisis Intervention Institute, produced a video series, and with Dr. Mary M. Wood, co-authored Life Space Crisis Intervention; Talking With Students in Conflict.