CHARLESTON – Mountain View Youth Development Center is the first correctional setting in the nation to embrace a groundbreaking treatment model for explosive-noncompliant behavior that has been successfully tried in schools, families and inpatient mental facilities.

Called Collaborative Problem-Solving, the model proposes that individuals with difficult behaviors should be handled the same way as individuals with recognized learning disabilities.

“Children do well if they can, and, if they can’t, we adults need to figure out why, so we can help,” CPS originator Ross Greene, Ph.D., told about 100 mental health caregivers from throughout the region gathered at the youth development center Tuesday.

While the youth development center has been teaching cognitive skills in its accredited school since its opening, Greene’s model takes the facility to another level, Eric Hansen, superintendent of the facility, said Tuesday.

“It’s a powerful new tool in the toolbox. It won’t take care of everything, but it’s something that can be used effectively to produce better results over time,” Hansen said.

Greene believes that a child with explosive behavior lacks development skills. He or she may need help in executive or thinking skills, language processing skills, organization or planning skills, sensory-motor skills, emotion regulation skills or social skills – skills that he identifies as pathways.

“Every kid walking through your door has a learning disability … those kids can’t deal with frustration,” said Greene, who wrote “The Explosive Child.”

“You have a lot of developmental 2-year-olds walking through the door,” Greene said. He is the director of the CPS Institute in the department of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and co-director of the Center for Collaborative Problem Solving.

Greene faulted schools that teach to the mean. “That’s bad education,” he said. All children do not fit into the same mold, he suggested.

The standard approaches, which suggest that explosive behavior results from inept parenting practices or is done for attention, and the subsequent reward and punishment practices meted out, haven’t been effective for young adults who end up in juvenile detention facilities.

So Greene believes that instead of laying the blame, adults need to pinpoint what’s behind the explosive behavior so they know what to fix. When adults know what skills the child or young adult is lacking, then they know exactly what they are going to teach, he said. Instead of sending the juvenile to a timeout room, ask, “What’s up?” he suggested.

“This is an attempt to remedy some of the things that don’t work very well for these types of kids so they can learn the skills they need to make it in the real world,” Greene said, during a break in his presentation.

While there is no “quick fix,” Greene said, his model focuses less on rewards and punishment and more on communication and collaborative problem solving. It also encourages adults to help the child develop the skills needed to become more flexible and to handle frustration more adaptively.

For Hansen, the new model is something that all the staff can engage in, not just social workers. “I’m hoping that, number one, it will provide for a safer institution reducing the assault on kids and staff, and, number two, it will help us develop a more collaborative culture that works on long-term solutions,” he said. Another benefit he expects is a reduction in the number of times staff members have to use force and use lockdowns to quell disruptive behavior.

Greene’s visit and his planned supervision of the model in the coming months at Charleston is being funded through federal Juvenile Justice funds.