Page 27 - Embark-Annual-Report-Flipbook

The CASA Developmental Framework
The CASA Developmental Framework is the neurobiological methodology for creating experiences of secure attachment — the safe and reliable bond between a child and a nurturing and responsive primary caregiver, usually a parent. Rooted in decades of evidence-based research15,16, CASA emphasizes that mutually beneficial, secure attachment is essential for optimal development (emotional, physical, and relational health) where resiliency, self-identity, and worth reside.
Commitment: Doing what’s developmentally best for a child, even when it takes extended time and effort.
Acceptance: Embracing children as inherently valuable, independent of their behavior.
Security: Setting and maintaining consistent, safe, and nurturing boundaries.
Attunement: Demonstrating empathy in action. Attunement creates a co-regulated nervous system between child and caregiver. Co-regulation, the reciprocal exchange of emotional, neurological, and physical safety, is a constant process, not a steady state.
Systemic Approach
Embark believes healing is a joint process between a clinical treatment team and the entire family. We therefore favor a systemic approach to treatment that honors the systems, patterns, rules,
and behaviors within a child, their family, and their environment. This approach provides the most sophisticated tools for whole-family healing because it changes the experience and environment that the negative behaviors and emotions needed to exist. It replaces current family interactions and communication with healthier ones that foster connection and healing.
Experiential Therapy
To develop emotionally, psychologically, and even physically, we need reliable and repeated experiences of safety and security from caregivers. We create these healthy experiences by using therapeutic experiential methods that optimize emotional, physical, and relational development,
as informed by the CASA Developmental Framework. Our therapists take a creative approach to treatment through experience-based, hands-on activities, such as going to a park or interacting with animals, allowing them to provide treatment in a more relaxed environment that fosters healing.
Measuring Lasting Change: The Embark Behavioral Health Annual Outcomes Report 27