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Collegiate Review

The first step in the LT application process is for a Reliant Reviewer to be the first set of eyes on the application. This may be a Reliant employee or Reliant Central Staff.

Currently, the Reliant Reviewer role is assigned to Caleb Hayworth (Collegiate Processing and Systems Admin). If the Reliant Reviewer identifies areas of concern on the application, it will then be defered to Collegiate reivew for a second pair of eyes to read over the application.

The next stage after the LT Reliant Reviewer stage is the LT Collegiate Reviewer Stage. The Collegiate Reviewer(s) should be reviewers for both the Collegiate Review stage as well as the Counseling Review stage. If there are multiple Collegiate reviewers, the first reviewer to begin the review of the applicant becomes the only one who can then finish the review of that applicant.

• Collegiate Reviewer will be sent an email from the HUB from the Reliant reviewer who found a concern on an LT Assessment. 

• The Collegiate Reviewer will then go into the HUB and review the assessment.

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    title Collegiate Reviewer HUB Instructions
    In this phase, the reviewer can still see the whole application, in addition to the completed Reliant Review. The reviewer can then choose to accept if no follow up is necessary. If a follow up is necessary, then the review will not be submitted and the reviewer will see a pop-up reminder to follow up with the local leadership. Once the follow-up is complete, the reviewer can log back in and enter the follow-up decision. If normal acceptance is chosen, the applicant will receive the standard acceptance email. If "accept with conditions" is chosen, there will be a box to enter the conditional requirements for acceptance and Sarah Swann will receive an email and instructions on how to send the conditional acceptance to the applicant. If "suggest acceptance with national review" is chosen, they can list suggested conditions for acceptance and still move to National Review. If "Decline acceptance" is chosen, there will be a box to put any comments to the local leadership.

    
    

  • The Collegiate Reviewer will then call or text with the local church leadership to discuss the situation.

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      title Conversation with the local church leadership
      Here are steps that we suggest the Collegiate reviewer taking once they receive an email from Reliant saying they have a concerned participant that warrants follow-up with the local pastor/spiritual reference and necessitates meeting one on one with the participant to discuss the concerns. Text the local pastor or spiritual reference listed on the application to set up a time to discuss the concerns. Call and talk through the concerns with the pastor/spiritual reference and explain the below expectations. Ask them to help you know more about who the person is and what you would be getting into by accepting them into the program. Discuss specific questions that you would want them to ask the participant in regards to the specific concerns. Remind them to take notes and report back via email so that we have written documentation about how we handled the concern. Explain the process to them so that they know what our expectations are: We are asking them to follow up one on one with the concerned participant and discuss the concerns in more detail. We want to explain to the participant that we care about them and our heart is to help them have a good experience during the program and we want to figure out the best place for them if that's to attend or not to attend the program. If we feel like the best place is the attend the program, then let them know there will likely be conditions put in place for them to follow (for example meeting with a staff member bi-weekly for accountability and/or asking them to refrain from what they are doing, etc.) and make sure that they are willing to agree to those conditions. Let the participant know that if we decide to move forward with acceptance, they will be receiving a conditional email. The email will sound more formal and perhaps a little intense and will list policies and conditions that we are asking them to agree to follow. The wording on the email has been created for liability reasons so it will sound more legal and less friendly so we just want to let them know so that they are not surprised by the way it is worded. After the call with the local pastor or spiritual reference, send an email to them explaining everything that was just discussed over the phone again as a way to remind them in written form what you discussed. Ask them to report back details from the conversation with the participant by replying back to this email so that we have it documented in written form the student's responses and the pastor/spiritual reference's recommendation of whether or not they feel like we should accept the participant.

      
      

    • The Collegiate Reviewer will then email the (lt@reliant.org) along with the local church leader as a written recap of their phone or text conversation and ask the church leader to reply all to that email once they have met with the LT applicant.

      
      

    • The local church leader will reply to the email and answer the questions asked with updates from meeting with the LT applicant.

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        title Sample Email from Collegiate Reviewer to Local Church Leader including Church Leader Reply
        Here's an example of a follow-up between a local church leadership and the collegiate reviewer discussing a participant with emotional concerns. Reliant asked them to find out more about the frequency and severity of panic attacks that the student had listed on her application. The collegiate reviewer called the local church leader to discuss it and then followed up with this email to help remind them of what they had discussed. The local church leader then added the answers from the student (in bold) to the email based on the discussion with the student. Like we talked about on the phone, I’d love for you to set up a time to meet with this student as soon as you can. In this meeting please let her know and ask about these things: Tell her we are very excited that she wants to come to LT. We hope that it will be an amazing summer for her! Let her know that on her application she mentioned that she has about 2-3 panic attacks per month. We want her to be set up to have a great summer and to be cared for by us, the staff. Ask her what her panic attacks looks like. She said she experiences a rapid heart rate/ heart racing, dizziness/feels like the room is spinning, difficulty breathing. She said that 2-3 times a month number was her best estimate/average at the time, but that she has experienced fewer lately. Ask her how long they typically last She said they typically last about 5-10 minutes depending on how quickly she is able to remove herself from the situation. She said when these occur, she tries to leave the environment/ situation, focus on her breathing and meditating on what she is feeling and why. Ask her if it would serve her to have an older staff woman be available for her that she can look to in times of need. I (LT director) would assign someone and recommend that they meet in the first couple days of LT and for that staff member to check in during the first 3 weeks. Yes, she’s very open to this! Let us know how she responds. The emphasis is that we really want to care for her during her time out here this summer!!!

        
        

    • Collegiate Reviewer will then reply back to that email stating the next steps that he has chosen (accepting normally, accepting with conditions, moving to national review).
    • If the next step was normal acceptance. Then the Collegiate Reviewer will tell the HUB to send the acceptance email. The Reliant LT Reviewer will make a PDF of this email chain and upload the email PDF to the application to keep on file to show due diligence in the vetting process.
    • If the next step is accept to with conditions, then the Collegiate Reviewer will tell the HUB to send a conditional acceptance. The HUB then emails lt@reliant.org with instructions to accept this person with conditions that were listed by the Collegiate Reviewer once Collegiate Reviewer has initiated that phase in the HUB. 

Concerns decided on a collegiate level: 

Those scenarios include, but are not limited to:

• Depression/anxiety (seeing a counselor and/or taking medication but it seems under control)
• Alcohol usage (habitual underage drinking and/or lack of seeing underage drinking as an issue)
• Sexual purity (continued issue and/or no accountability listed)
• Pornography/masturbation (continued issue and/or no accountability listed),
• Multiple concerns listed
• Spiritual reference is unaware of the struggles listed by the participant
• or the spiritual reference listed struggles that the participant did not.

We want to leave the final acceptance decision of these concerns in the hands of the Collegiate Reviewer and local pastor and LT director that will be with the participant all summer.

• If the next step is national review, then the Collegiate Reviewer will first reach out to discuss the concerned applicant with the LT director. If they want to move forward, then the Collegiate Reviewer will tell the HUB to move forward with National Review (see below).
• If the next step is to decline the applicant, then follow LT Declination Next Steps.

National Review

Counselor Review

The next step after the LT National Review is the Counselor Review

• If the next step is to send to counseling review, then the Reliant LT National Reviewer will select counseling review inside the HUB and the HUB will email the Collegiate Reviewer that a counselor "recommendation" is needed. (We use the word recommendation, but actually the counselor is not allowed to make an actual recommendation due to liability on their end. They can however give an assessment on how the applicant is doing and that will help us determine next steps.) It will also email both the Collegiate Reviewer and the local church pastor with instructions asking them to let the participant know we would like them to receive a counselor review.

• The local church pastor will talk with the participant and give them the counselor review information requesting the participant to ask a counselor for their recommendation and to send that recommendation to the Collegiate Reviewer.
• Once the Collegiate Reviewer has heard back from the counselor:
  • If the green light is given,
  • Then the Collegiate Reviewer will choose to accept with conditions in the HUB.
  • lt@reliant.org will receive an email that says accept with conditions.
  • A safety plan (see below) is required for anyone that is accepted in a counselor review stage.
• If Collegiate Reviewer receives a reason to be concerned, you have the approval to decline the applicant.
  • Select decline in the HUB
  • lt@reliant.org will receive a declination email request

With an Event Assessment revealing concerns regarding suicidal thoughts, ideations, or past attempts, the National Reviewers may require (depending on the individual situation) as an additional condition - a counselor/therapist assessment before final acceptance. This may be required, even if the event director and Reliant are still in favor of moving forward toward acceptance.

As a potential condition for acceptance, Reliant would ask the applicant to sign a release waiver with their counselor/therapist. This waiver would then allow the Collegiate Reviewer (or both collegiate reviewer and local pastor) to be able to contact the counselor/therapist and get their thoughts and current assessment on their emotional stability (we cannot ask for their recommendation as that would be too much liability for them) on the applicant attending the program (or not). Reliant wants the collegiate reviewer to be on the waiver because we want to have the ability to contact the counselor/therapist to keep the lines of communication open over the entire course of the event, if a follow-up conversation ever becomes necessary. However, Reliant would be open to allowing a local pastor to be that person listed on the waiver if the local pastor is also attending the program with the applicant and will continue following up with them.

The applicant’s acceptance approval by the Reliant National reviewers could be conditional on the participant signing the release waiver, thereby giving the program director/local pastor the ability to talk with the counselor/therapist. If the applicant does not want to sign the release waiver, then this may possibly be deemed an unwillingness to co-operate (which may possibly be construed that they are potentially hiding something) and Reliant may decide that it is not willing to accept them for liability reasons. If the counselor/therapist does not give a positive assessment of the applicant attending the program, then generally Reliant will not accept the applicant for the program.

If the counselor/therapist current assessment does not show emotional stability for the applicant for attending the program, but the collegiate reviewer is still not convinced that the applicant should be accepted (even after talking to the counselor/therapist), then Reliant reserves the right to not accept the applicant.

In most cases, the applicant is already seeing a counselor. This is standard procedure for the counselor to talk to someone (we recommend the program director or if need be the local pastor) about their client. Once the participant signs the release the counselor is able to communicate with that person to discuss the current assessment with their client to attend the program over the summer.

If the participant is not seeing a counselor/therapist, then Reliant may ask that they go see a licensed counselor in order to move forward with our conditions for acceptance. But, we also understand that a counselor/therapist may not want to make an assessment after just one or two therapy sessions and Reliant will need to take that into consideration on how to move forward from there.

These types of scenarios will be treated on a case-by-case basis. Reliant may potentially move forward with provisionally accepting an applicant prior to the conditional acceptance criteria being completed. Reliant may do this with the caveat that we could still potentially withdraw initial acceptance from the applicant if after any condition(s) are met and we still later decide that the applicant should not attend the program. Reliant suggests that the local pastor at least have the applicant state that they are willing to move forward, with understanding this above condition, before Reliant officially accepts them. The final decision is left in the collegiate reviewer's hands to say if they would prefer that Reliant wait until the condition(s) have been fully met and discussed before moving forward. Or if the national reviewer feels comfortable, Reliant can move forward knowing we could potentially retract our acceptance at a later time.

Asking for Counselor's Assessment

Here are instructions for how to ask the event applicant for their counselor's assessment for a Reliant program: This would typically be sent to a representative from the local church leadership that the program applicant is from, that would then meet with the applicant and give them this information to pass on to the counselor.

The local church leadership would set up a meeting with the applicant and explain the following:

• Share with the applicant that we are excited for him/her to have this opportunity.
• Discuss that we want to make the program a success for them.
• Explain that there are some condition(s) that he/she needs to meet in order to be accepted.
• Explain to him/her the needed assessment from his/her counselor/therapist and how to obtain that (see instructions below).
• Explain that we will need to wait for the collegiate reviewer to review the counselor's assessment before we move forward.
• Explain to them that if he/she is conditionally accepted, one of the conditions is generally to meet with a staff member for # of weekly meetings for check-in, accountability, and to care for him/her.
• There may also be a request to continue counseling remotely with their counselor or to meet with a local counselor during the program.
• After the meeting, respond back to the collegiate reviewer with how the meeting went, and if he/she agrees to those condition(s).

Letter from Counselor/Therapist

If the counselor does not specifically state that the written assessment to the collegiate reviewer may not be forwarded or shared, then Reliant would like to have a copy of the assessment to keep for their records. Thus, if the counselor notes that this may only be shared with the collegiate reviewer, then Reliant will put the decision in the collegiate reviewer's hands to make the decision as to whether or not they recommend acceptance of the applicant based on the counselor's assessment (as not to break the confidentiality agreement). If the collegiate reviewer sees any reason based on the counselor's assessment, not to accept the applicant, then the collegiate reviewer would need to make the decision to not accept the participant.

CONDITIONS FOR SUICIDAL CONCERNS

• The most common condition for all applicants in the counselor review is to also ask them to meet with a staff member bi-weekly during the summer to help keep them accountable and to follow up with how they are doing.
• For those participants that have severe emotional struggles we also suggest that a follow up takes place with the participant (preferable around 2 weeks before the event) to confirm that their condition has not negatively changed and to receive any updates to help us prepare to care for the participant better during the program.
• We also ask the applicant to turn in a safety plan.

Counseling during the program

Many counselors can not continue meeting with their client during the program if they are attending a summer program out of state because when they cross state lines they do not have a license to practice counseling in that state. However, there are some counselors do allow for FaceTime meetings or phone calls. If the participant can continue meetings with their counselor over the summer we highly recommend that they continue meeting.

Reliant's usual condition for any emotional and psychiatric concerns is to require the participant to meet with summer program leadership staff for a certain number of weeks over the summer to check in and see how they are doing. Typically the summer program leadership staff that is meeting with the participants is not a licensed counselor. Because of this, Reliant recommends the local summer program leadership review the information below to become familiar with what constitutes an involuntary commitment/mandatory treatment for a person to receive emergency psychiatric care (often resulting in hospitalization) if necessary. This is only if the person themselves does not voluntarily admit themselves and is deemed a danger to themselves (typically in the case of thoughts of suicide or self-harm.) We want to make sure the program leadership is aware that they may need to contact law enforcement if ever such an occasion should arise.