Meet the Staff: Julia Stifler, HCRS School-based Clinician

Julia is one of three school-based clinicians at Kindle Farm, where the school’s emphasis on experiential learning provides a great setting for Julia to bring her clinical work onto the hiking trails, the basketball court, and into the garden. At Kindle Farm, the clinical team offers a variety of services to students, families, and school personnel. Julia’s work includes conducting individual therapy sessions, occasional family therapy sessions, some group work, collaboration with treatment teams within and outside of HCRS, contact with caregivers regularly to stay updated on students’ successes and challenges, and in-depth collaboration with teachers, behavioral interventionists, and other school staff. Also, the clinical team offers quarterly training to all Kindle Farm staff to enhance the organization’s overall understanding and skills related to clinical theories and practices.

Julia’s path to Kindle Farm began in 2007 when she started working as a summer camp counselor in Maine. Her passion for working with young people in an experiential setting has continued to grow in the years since and has taken her on many professional adventures, as a teacher, wilderness therapy guide, residential counselor in a psychiatric hospital, and international travel instructor. She then attended graduate school at the University of New Hampshire, where she received a dual Masters in social work and outdoor education. Julia’s area of clinical focus is in Adventure Therapy, in which treatment occurs through a relational, experiential, kinesthetic framework. Her clinical interventions often involve shared problem-solving activities, nature-based experiences, and occasional trips to a high ropes course. In adventure therapy, clients learn new ways of solving problems and addressing stressors in the context of therapeutic relationships and trauma-informed opportunities to feel appropriately challenged and expand their comfort zones.

In her adventure therapy groups at Kindle Farm, Julia structures a sequence of experiences in a way that allows clients to learn interpersonal skills, develop self-confidence, and address obstacles that get in their way of forming real relationships and solving problems. For example, a typical afternoon might involve a warm-up game geared toward sharing some laughter, getting the group’s energy up, and getting a sense of each client’s energy level and willingness to engage in that day’s programming. Then, the group would move into a higher-stakes activity or problem-solving initiative, like Stepping Stones, where the group has to work together to get from one point to another, collecting and using resources along the way and avoiding certain obstacles.

Framing and debriefing of this activity would focus on the treatment goals of the group members, and could include questions like, “What are some of the resources that help you get to where you need to go at school? What are some of the obstacles that get in your way? As a group, how do we handle conflict when different people have different ideas about how to solve a problem? What made us successful in this activity? What tools for effective communication did we use? When faced with a challenge in a class or at home with your family, how do you usually respond? Are there any tools that you can take with you from this experience here and try using the next time you are faced with a challenge?”

After several weeks of progressing through increasingly challenging activities, the clients usually have an opportunity to leave campus and use challenge course elements at a nearby course. Ideally, with the right skill development already in place, the challenge course experience becomes a chance to put the group’s communication skills, trust, and comfort to the test. Julia has enjoyed witnessing Kindle Farm students rise to the occasion in offering each other physical and emotional support on the challenge course, coaching each other through difficult moments, belaying each other on the ropes system, celebrating successes throughout the day. If all goes well, the 8-week group experience results in an increased sense of confidence, safety in relationships, and other transferable tools that can serve clients in future challenging situations.