SITE GUIDE

If you’d like to learn more about Lives in the Balance, visit the About Lives in the Balance page. And if you have any comments about this website, suggestions for additional content, or want to provide us with any feedback on how Lives in the Balance can more effectively advocate on behalf of challenging kids and their caregivers, feel free to submit your ideas using the Contact form.

✓ If you're new to Collaborative Problem Solving, the LEARN section is the place to start. But there's good stuff in this section for those with some experience in the model as well: 

- If you're a newcomer, you'll want to begin on the What Is Collaborative Problem Solving? page, where you'll be guided, via streaming video, through the basic tenets of the CPS model.
- After that, you'll want to view the video examples of Plan B on the Plan B in Action page. You'll see how Plan B looks and sounds, as well as the ways in which Plan B can go awry.
- Once you're solid on the basics, you'll want to check out the Hot Topics page, where specific issues and difficulties that often arise in implementing the CPS model are discussed.
- If you're interested in learning even more, check out the Workshops/Training page...there are lots of different training options to meet your specific needs.
- In his periodic commentaries in The Real World section, Dr. Greene calls attention to the ways in which things can be changed for the better (and the price we all pay when we stick with the status quo).

✓ Living with, teaching, and working with a behaviorally challenging kid can be frustrating, hard, and isolating. So it helps to hear from others who've made the journey and to have a place to tell your own story. That's what the SHARE section of the site is all about.

- On the Voices of CPS page, you'll hear from other people who've been implementing CPS, along with all the hurdles, doubts, challenges, and breakthroughs that take place along the way.
- If you're interested in sharing your own hurdles, doubts, challenges, and/or breakthroughs, the Tell Your Story page is the place to do it.
- Parenting or teaching a challenging kid is no laughing matter, but if you could use a little relief, submit your own caption for our monthly comic on the Comic Relief page...and check out what other folks have submitted as well.
- As you read above, you can nominate someone who's been championing CPS and advocating on behalf of kids with social, emotional, and behavioral challenges and their caregivers in the Recognition Awards section of the site.

✓ Need support in implementing the CPS model at home or school? Running into trouble implementing Plan B? Need help using the model with a particular kid? Lives in the Balance is committed to making sure you get the support you need, and the resources in the CONNECT section may be helpful.

- One option is to tune in to one of Dr. Greene's weekly, web-based radio programs in the Radio Programs/Listening Library section of the site. One program focuses primarily on application of the model at school, another on using the model at home, and a third on implementing the model in restrictive therapeutic facilities. If you can't join in live, you can always listen to recordings of past programs in the Listening Library, where there is an enormous amount of information on kids with behavioral challenges and implementing the CPS model. Have a question for Dr. Greene?
- If he doesn't answer it on one of his radio programs, he'll respond on the In the Trenches page, where there are already answers to questions submitted by others.

✓ If you're ready to get more involved and start taking action on behalf of challenging kids and their parents, teachers, and other caregivers, you'll want to spend some time in the COLLABORATE section of the website.

- For starters, you'll want to read the Bill of Rights for Challenging Kids (and get other folks to do the same). Then, if you agree with its contents, sign it (and encourage others to do that, too). Lives in the Balance will be sending the signed Bill of Rights to key leaders to promote awareness of how things need to change so society is more responsive to the difficulties and needs of kids with behavioral challenges and their caregivers.
- If you want to stay current on news related to behaviorally challenging kids and how they're understood and treated, you'll want to check out the Good and Bad News section. As you might expect, it's the bad news that usually makes the headlines...but it's those headlines that heighten awareness of the work that still needs to be done.
- You'll also want to sign up for the Lives in the Balance newsletter and call to action, Action Plan B, to stay current on other things you can be doing in your community to advocate on behalf of challenging kids and their caregivers and to stay abreast of the latest developments at Lives in the Balance (you can sign up on the Take Action page).  
- Do you know someone who needs to learn about the CPS model...someone who needs accurate, current information on why kids are challenging and how to go about helping them in ways that are more compassionate and productive? Send them a Care Package.
- Want to let the world know where you stand on how to understand behaviorally challenging kids? Make a Statement by ordering a Lives in the Balance t-shirt or bumper sticker.

✓ The Resources section contains all the instruments associated with CPS model, including the Assessment of Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems (ALSUP), the Plan B Flowchart, and the Plan B Cheat Sheet (they're all on The Paperwork page). And the various books, research papers, and other articles and chapters related to the CPS model can be found on the Heavy Reading page.

✓ If you're interested in helping spread information about Collaborative Problem Solving, you'll definitely want to get acquainted with the information on the Copyright and Trademark Info page.  

CREDITS

Many thanks to the supremely talented and patient Jon Sachs for his design of this site, to all the folks at Redfin Solutions for the technical expertise that makes it all work, to the incomparable Manfred Klein for his ingenuity and willingness to allow the use of his images, and to Jack Maypole, M.D., for the outstanding artwork on the cartoons.