Supporting Teens Starts with Supporting the Adults Who Serve Them

Supporting Teens Starts with Supporting the Adults Who Serve Them

April 28, 2026

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By Shannon Casas
Family Resiliency Manager, Wellroot Family Services

Adolescence can be challenging—for young people and for the adults who care about them.

Reaching Teens, a four-session virtual training provided by Wellroot Family Services, equips adults to better support and serve these young people in ways that build relationships where teens feel safe, capable and connected. And when teens feel they belong, they are more likely to show up for themselves and others.

In Georgia schools, an average of 19.5% of students were chronically absent in 2025, missing 10% or more school days. Chronic absenteeism is at its highest in high school grades.

Source: Georgia Department of Education

Positive childhood experiences—like feeling a sense of belonging in school and having at least two non-parent adults who take a genuine interest in them—can help change the story for these Georgia teens.

Reaching Teens gives professionals working with teens a powerful, practical framework for helping young people believe in themselves, even when life gets hard. Professionals learn how to recognize everyday moments—classroom interactions, discipline conversations, check-ins, and transitions—as opportunities to reinforce resilience. When teens feel capable, connected, and understood, they are more likely to engage, take positive risks, and see themselves as people who can grow and succeed.

For high school students, odds of delinquency were 14% lower for every one additional positive childhood experience students had, according to a study published in May 2025 in Child Abuse & Neglect: The international Journal.

Wellroot’s Reaching Teens training course was adapted from the nationally recognized Reaching Teens toolkit published by the American Academy of Pediatrics and endorsed by its author, Dr. Ken Ginsburg. Skills chosen for inclusion in Reaching Teens have been evaluated in different settings and are evidence informed. At its core, the approach centers one powerful truth:

Supportive, trusted relationships are the foundation of healthy adolescent development.

Rather than focusing on “fixing” behavior, Reaching Teens supports adults in:

• Seeing teens through a strength based lens
• Understanding how trauma and stress impact the developing brain
• Responding with radical calmness and empathy
• Helping young people build confidence, coping skills, and a sense of control

This approach helps shift the question from “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?”

Get the Foundations

The Foundation training series includes four interactive sessions:

Session 1: Understanding Teenagers and Trauma
Explore how life experiences and trauma shape the developing brains of adolescents. Learn how understanding the teen brain and leveraging this knowledge is a starting point to building strength-based relationships with teens.

Session 2: Preparing To Care
Learn what compassion resilience is and how to develop it to achieve professional longevity. This session gives practitioners self-care and resilience-building strategies to avoid burnout.

Session 3: Reframing & Radical Calmness
Master the language of resilience and how demonstrating radical calmness can help teens manage stressful situations. Explore co-regulation and gain strategies to support self-regulation in teenagers.

Session 4: Strength-based Approach
Learn practical, strength-based communication skills to build resilience and independence in teens. This session also provides strategies to help teens cope with stress.

Build on Your Skills

After completing the foundation training, participants can continue with:

• Deep Dive sessions, which focus on applying Reaching Teens principles in real world situations, and
• Connect & Reflect sessions, which offer a supportive space to ask questions, share challenges, and learn alongside others doing similar work.

Learn More and Register

Spring and summer 2026 virtual Reaching Teens trainings are now available.

• May 6    Foundations 1 & 2    9 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
• May 7    Foundations 3 & 4    9 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
• May 12    Deep Dive    Noon-1:30 p.m.
• May 28    Connect & Reflect    Noon-1 p.m.
• June 3    Foundations 1 & 2    9 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
• June 4    Foundations 3 & 4    9 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
• June 9    Deep Dive    Noon-1:30 p.m.
• June 25    Connect & Reflect    Noon-1 p.m.
• Aug. 5    Foundations 1 & 2    9 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
• Aug. 6    Foundations 3 & 4    9 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
• Aug. 18    Deep Dive    Noon-1:30 p.m.
• Aug. 27    Connect & Reflect    Noon-1 p.m.

Register online now or visit wellroot.org and click on Community Training to learn more. Download the flyer. Questions? Email ReachingTeens@wellroot.org.