The Counseling House will be the presenting organization for the Belle Vernon Reality Tour in 2014, an evidenced based drug and alchohol prevention program for middle school students and their families.

Registration for the upcoming BVA Reality Tour programs is underway.  Please  visit www.realitytour.org to download the application. Pre-registration is required. The tour will be held at Belle Vernon Area High School the 2nd Monday of each month, 6 to 9pm. Starting in September 2014.

Reality Tour is a volunteer-driven substance abuse prevention program that is presented to parents and their children (ages 10-17) in a community setting over the course of one approximately 3-hour session. The goal of the program is to increase children’s negative attitudes toward alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and other illicit drugs, as well as their perceived risk of harm from use of these substances. Reality Tour provides participants with testimonies from individuals with a history of addiction, an address by law enforcement personnel, and the opportunity to pose questions to these speakers. The session also includes dramatic narratives (provided on CD) that precede brief reenactments of emergency room and funeral home scenes involving a young person who has overdosed on drugs, as well as the portrayal of an arrest and imprisonment (or the viewing of an arrest and imprisonment on DVD).

Reality Tour participants are given information on coping and refusal skills, as well as guidance in assessing their own coping skills. Each child receives printed profiles of abused drugs, a form that includes a contact list for community resources, and a personal photograph that has been digitally altered to show how the child’s appearance might change negatively from substance use. Children also are encouraged to sign a banner pledging to remain drug free. Parents receive printed drug education materials and resources for accessing electronic materials, as well as the opportunity to sign up for newsletters delivered via email.