Hina Mauka Is a Top Tier Treatment

Hina Mauka is a top tier treatment and rehabilitation center located in Waipahu, Hawaii, in the United States. The services that it offers include programs directed at adults, adolescents, and families to overcome alcoholism and addiction issues in a setting that is safe and nurturing (Hina Mauka, 2009). Each of these programs has different goals and objectives that are outlined as manners to measure its success. This essay will exam Hina Mauka's Teen C.A.R.E. program, which is aimed at middle and high school students.

Hina Mauka's Teen C.A.R.E. program is an innovative program that offers outpatient treatment to adolescent patients during the school day and on campus. The program collaborates with a number of high schools on both the Island of Oahu and the Island of Kauai (2009). It locates counselors on the campuses of these high schools and middle schools, which facilitates consistency, visibility, and accessibility of the services, while also providing support for both the staff and the students of the high school (2009). The treatment that the Teen C.A.R.E. program offers includes individual and group process, counseling, recreational activities that do not include drugs or alcohol, and healthy role modeling (2009).

There appear to be multiple goals incorporated in the Teen C.A.R.E. program, although the website only states one, "to have the adolescent reduce or abstain from alcohol or drug use." No other goals are stated regarding the Teen C.A.R.E. program. There is one clear objective that is stated on the website, which is "to role model healthy communication and teach skills that will make life work for them: staying in school, staying away from illegal activity, giving and receiving respect, and learning that it can be safe and healthy to trust." The objective is much more clearly defined, as it is clearly stated on the website that there is one; the goals are less clearly defined because, while the website states that there are "goals" in the plural form, only one is listed on the website. It is unclear as to which other goals they are referring.

The Teen C.A.R.E. goal, to have students reduce use of and abstain from alcohol and drug use, is clearly a goal because it is something that is to be accomplished in the long-term. Meanwhile, the objective, to "role model healthy communication and teach skills that will make life work for them: staying in school, staying away from illegal activity, giving and receiving respect, and learning that it can be safe and healthy to trust," is clearly an objective. The reason for this assessment is that teaching specific skills, helping students to stay in school, helping students to stay away from illegal activity, and learning to give and receive respect and trust, are much more concrete attainments. They can be achieved by following a certain number of steps, and can be clearly outlined with measurement tools such as timelines and budgets.

The timelines for both the objective and the goal listed on the Teen C.A.R.E. website are comparatively different. The goal, in keeping with the traditional characteristics of a goal, is something that can be achieved in the long-term, when compared with the objective. Likewise, the objective lists a number of accomplishments that would be attainable in the short- to medium-term. For example, staying in school and staying away from illegal activity (both accomplishments listed in the objective) would be accomplished in a much shorter period of time than would an overall reduction or abstinence from drugs and alcohol. This reduction and abstinence, in order to be considered to be successful, would have to be measured over a much longer amount of time, and therefore is keeping with the characteristic of a goal that states that goals are achieved over the long-term.

There are both manifest and latent characteristics of the goal and objective listed on the Hina Mauka Teen C.A.R.E. website. The latent characteristics include such achievements as receiving respect and learning that it can be safe and healthy to trust: these accomplishments may not be outwardly evident to a third party, thus making them latent. Meanwhile, there are a number of manifest goals which can be witnessed by a third party. They include staying in school, staying away from legal activity, giving respect, and reducing and abstaining from drug and alcohol use.