Teen and Young Adult Group
Being a teen or a young adult is hard enough, but teens and young
adults at Hassenfeld face the added challenges of living with a serious
medical condition.
Hassenfeld’s Teen and Young Adult (TYA) Program provides resources, activities, support, and space that are just for them.
Members of the TYA Program get together to hang out and to talk about what’s going on with them.
Group members gain valuable skills and confidence from programs, activities, and outings they choose together.
Hassenfeld has a Teen Room, a comfortable, cool space with a computer, a plasma-screen TV, a DVD-VCR player, and a video-gaming system.
The purpose of the TYA Program is to provide a fun and safe way for Hassenfeld’s young adults to be themselves and for them to build skills that will help them be strong, resilient adults.
Group members get to know each other as teammates and they are able to share from their individual experiences.
The TYA Program gives group members a chance to be “unplugged” in ways that are silly, serious, and unexpected with a group of peers who understand where they are coming from.
In the past year the group has made an overnight photo-journaling trip to Hershey Park, they have gone to sporting events, they have made masks with the School of Visual Arts art therapy graduate students, they have walked across the Brooklyn Bridge as part of the Light the Night Walk, and they have had a number of candid conversations over pizza and soda.
The TYA Program is overseen by two of Hassenfeld’s Creative Arts Therapists.
Hassenfeld’s Teen and Young Adult Program was featured in the PBS program “In the Mix” that addressed the topic of teens living with a chronic illness.
