Lydia Home/RICE
The Rice Center, run by LYDIA Home Association, provides a temporary home for many of Illinois’ young children in care with severe mental health and behavior needs. The residential care and treatment center helps children move forward and work towards a goal of transition to a less restrictive environment within 18 months and ultimately, return to a stable home.
The center serves children ages six to 15 with emotional and behavioral problems that prevent them from living in a family setting. None of the children served are new to the mental health system. Most have prior psychiatric hospitalizations and nearly 100% have been through a prior treatment program. When children arrive at the center, most come from families that don’t yet have the skills required to meet the needs of these children in a family setting.
The Rice Center facility is in a residential neighborhood within the Evanston community. In 1991, a new facility was constructed that includes housing for up to 50 children, a gymnasium, an art studio and other modern amenities, including one of only two centers in Illinois that has a public school operating within its campus.
The Rice Center takes a holistic treatment approach designed to treat and transition youth into a family setting within 12 to 18 months. Clinicians develop individual treatment and transition plans for each child. Residents of the Rice Center receive a range of therapeutic and rehabilitative stabilization services designed to address their emotional needs while providing a supportive environment that encourages personal growth. The Rice Program is based on campus wide and unit specific age and developmentally appropriate expectations and rules. These expectations and rules govern safety and predictability. Staff implement and reinforce expectations and within a context of a collaborative and non-coercive relationship between staff and client.
Our teachers work closely with the social workers and staff at The Rice Center to design theatre and arts curriculum, specifically tailored to the needs of the students. In our classes, students have the opportunity to express themselves without judgement in a safe environment. The Piven methodology emphasizes the importance of ensemble and community. We bring this lens to our classes at Rice and aim to create opportunities for students to be creative and build community. In addition to theatre training in the Piven methodology, we also provide workshops in dance and invite teaching artists with other artistic specialities to teach masterclasses. In this way, the students are exposed to a wide variety of arts curriculum. Over the pandemic, we partnered with Rice to offer virtual programming to their students. Now, we are happy to be back in person, offering essential arts programming to the students at the Rice Center.
