The Power Source Program (PS)

Trauma-impacted, systems-involved youth and young adults, aged 13 to 25 years old, including those who are currently placed in a detention facility (pre- or post-adjudication); at-risk of out-of-home/residential placement due to criminal offenses or other offending behavior; currently enrolled in preventative or alternative to incarceration programs in the community; or engaging in behaviors that place them at high risk for offending behavior (e.g., truancy, running away from home, substance use/misuse, unsafe sexual practices) but who may not have committed any offenses (criminal or status).

For children/adolescents ages: 13 - 25

The Power Source Program (PS) is a trauma-informed, resiliency-based prevention intervention designed specifically for systems-involved youth engaging in high-risk behaviors. Targeting the stage-salient developmental tasks of adolescence, PS aims to increase youths’ self-regulation skills, develop prosocial social-cognitive problem-solving skills, and foster positive self-identity using a combination of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Mindfulness Meditation (MT). Guided by the Process Model of Emotional Regulation, PS focuses on five specific emotional and cognitive regulation domains: a) situation selection, b) situation modification, c) attention deployment, d) cognitive change, and e) response modulation. PS content areas target criminogenic needs and risk factors for offending behavior: risk-taking, substance use, trauma, family dynamics, negative peer associations/gang involvement, antisocial attitudes/values, and issues related to appropriately expressing difficult emotions. PS also includes a focus on protective factors and building resiliency, incorporating work-readiness, adaptive communication, strength-based identity development, problem solving, goal setting, positive future orientation, empathy development, and perspective taking skills.

Jessica Linick, PhD, SEP

• Title: Clinical Director
• Agency/Affiliation: The Lionheart Foundation
• Website: https://lionheart.org/programs/power-source
• Email: jess@lionheart.org
• Phone: 781-444-6667

The goals of The Power Source Program (PS) are:

• Recognize the emotional, social, and situational factors that lead to high-risk behavior, including the link between trauma exposure and high-risk behaviors
• Develop health-promoting, prosocial behaviors to replace high-risk behaviors
• Build skills to tolerate and manage distressing emotions such as anger, disrespect, shame, grief, and fear with the goal of decreasing emotional reactivity
• Change negative core beliefs about themselves and others
• Identify individual and situational factors associated with substance use and learn alternative coping strategies
• Increase interpersonal skills to manage conflict, repair relationships, advocate, and seek help
• Understand the impact of early histories of trauma and adversity on triggers and coping strategies
• Acknowledge and take accountability for harms caused to others, including perspective taking/empathy development, taking responsibility, apologizing, and making amends
• Acquire the social and emotional skills associated with success in school and the workplace
• Select positive peers and acquire the skills to maintain those relationships
• Develop a positive future orientation

The essential components of The Power Source Program (PS) include:

• Power Source Mechanisms of Action include:
  • Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT):
    • Build emotion regulation
    • Distress tolerance
    • Problem solving
    • Prosocial social-cognitive processes
  • Mindfulness Meditation:
    • Assist youth in developing attentional and response modulation skills
  • Groups/Circle Process:
    • Promotes the development of:
    • Adaptive interpersonal skills
    • Frustration tolerance
    • Conflict resolution
    • Empathy
    • Promotes a healthy sense of belonging
• The curriculum addresses personally relevant issues impacting youth, including criminogenic needs and risk factors:
  • Risk-taking
  • Substance use
  • Trauma and adversity
  • Family dynamics
  • Identity development
  • Negative peer associations and gang involvement
  • Leisure and recreation, antisocial attitudes/values
  • Issues related to appropriately expressing difficult emotions, including anger, shame, grief, and disrespect.
• Latter parts of the curriculum include a focus on taking accountability for harms caused/offending behavior, including:
  • Examining the toll on victims
  • Apologizing
  • Making amends
  • Self-forgiveness
• Woven into all aspects of the program are tools to build youths’ resiliency, as well as protective factors against offending behavior, including:
  • Impulse control
  • Frustration tolerance
  • Mindfulness
  • Adaptive communication skills
  • Problem solving
  • Goal setting
  • Work-readiness skills
  • Empathy development
  • Perspective taking
  • Positive future orientation.
• Options for delivery of the program include:
  • The Power Source Group Facilitation Manual:
    • A fully scripted, 15-module manualized intervention designed for use with youth aged 13-25.
    • Each session employs a variety of high-impact therapeutic exercises, including:
      • Discussion topics
      • Role-plays
      • Vignettes
      • Reflective written exercises and worksheets
      • Meditations
      • Guided visualizations that promote high levels of youth engagement
    • The first three sessions can be used as a standalone program for youth with shorter stays
• The Power Source Book:
  • Used alongside the facilitator manual, the PS book is written specifically for systems-involved youth and contains the core PS skills interwoven with first-person, role model stories from real youth and adults who have been systems-impacted.
  • The book addresses issues that are relevant and engaging to youth displaying high-risk behaviors, and each role model story aligns with the topics discussed in the group session.
  • The book is written at a 4th grade reading level.
  • In addition to reading passages from the book during groups, each youth enrolled in the intervention receives a copy of the book and chapters are assigned as homework after each session.
• The Power Source Workbook:
  • Can be used as a standalone implementation approach, allowing youth to work through the material at their own pace, or as an adjunct to the full PS manual.
  • The workbook contains prompts to read sections of the PS book, then provides highly engaging worksheets to:
    • Reinforce PS material
    • Promote self-reflection
    • Encourage application of skills across contexts
  • When used in a group format, the workbook is facilitated primarily in Circle.
• The Power Source Training:
  • Available as a real-time virtual or in-person training, or electronically (via DVD), the PS training covers:
    • The history and development of the PS program
    • Theoretical underpinnings of the PS model
    • Main mechanisms of action (Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, Mindfulness Meditation, Group/Circle)
    • Overview of each content area/module
    • The importance of PS Facilitator Presence and staff self-regulation
    • Leading mindfulness and meditation practices
    • Best practices in implementation and rollout: group structure, process, frequency, and facilitation

Child/Adolescent Services

The Power Source Program (PS) directly provides services to children and addresses the following:

• High-risk, disruptive, or offending behavior across a variety of settings, including in trauma-impacted youth who are: currently detained; in the child welfare system (foster care, residential treatment, group homes); or youth without systems involvement but who are engaging in, or at high-risk of engaging in, disruptive or offending behaviors

Recommended Intensity

The PS manual group sessions are designed to be delivered once weekly for 60 minutes, with the option to add additional sessions as needed to reinforce concepts (e.g., meditation). Facilitators using PS individually meet as often as necessary, but at least weekly. Group facilitators also have the option to meet with youth individually for supplemental sessions.

Recommended Duration

For the full PS curriculum, at least 15 weeks (one week per module), with the option to extend programming depending on the needs of the agency or youth. If using the first three modules as standalone, a minimum of 3 weeks.

Delivery Settings

This program is typically conducted in a(n):

• Community-based Agency / Organization / Provider
• Group or Residential Care
• Justice Setting (Juvenile Detention, Jail, Prison, Courtroom, etc.)
• Outpatient Clinic
• Public Child Welfare Agency (Dept. of Social Services, etc.)
• School Setting (Including: Day Care, Day Treatment Programs, etc.)
• Shelter (Domestic Violence, Homeless, etc.)

Homework

This program does include a homework component.

Youth enrolled in the PS program are encouraged to meditate daily for homework, working towards a daily meditation practice of 20 minutes. Group facilitators are encouraged to assign additional homework based on the group topic (e.g., reading from the PS book), which are provided within each session.

Resources Needed to Run Program

The typical resources for implementing the program are:

• Private space to conduct sessions 
• Power Source books and session materials (worksheets from the facilitator guide or workbook) 
• Whiteboard, Chalkboard, or large poster paper 
• Writing utensils 
• Bell or chime for the opening meditation exercise (optional) 
• Power Source posters (optional)

Publicly available information indicates there is some training available for this program. See contact info.

Prerequisite/Minimum Provider Qualifications

The majority of the Power Source curriculum can be delivered by any service provider who is currently working directly with, or has experience working with, the youth that the program aims to serve: direct care providers, mental health professionals, case managers, educators, credible messengers, probation officers, or correctional staff. The exception is 4 modules of the facilitator manual, which specify that a person with advanced mental health training (e.g., social worker, psychologist, psychiatrist, counselor) at least be in the room, if not co-facilitating those modules.

While no formal meditation teacher training or prior experience is necessary, all facilitators are encouraged to engage in the same mindfulness and meditation practices that PS teaches.

Manual Information

There is a manual that describes how to deliver this program.

Program Manual(s)

Manual details:

• Casarjian, B. & Linick, J. (2020). The Power Source facilitator’s manual (2nd ed.). Lionheart Press. https://lionheart.org/product/the-power-source-facilitator-manual-second-edition

Training Information

There is training available for this program.

Training Type/Location:

Training can be obtained through contacting the Lionheart Foundation. There are two options for training:

• Lionheart can provide in-person or virtual training at the provider’s site
• The provider agency can purchase the DVD training series, consisting of a 6-hour, 10 module training videos

Implementation support and research are also available through the Training Contact listed above.

Number of days/hours:

The in-person training is 8 hours; the DVD training series is 6 hours (the difference in training hours is due to the live format making time for questions, live case examples, and practice).

What is included in the Relevant Published, Peer-Reviewed Research section?

• Note: The following study was not included in rating The Power Source Program on the Scientific Rating Scale.

  Leonard, N. R., Jha, A. P., Casarjian, B., Goolsarran, M., Garcia, C., Cleland, C. M., Gwadz, M. V., & Massey, Z. (2013). Mindfulness training improves attentional task performance in incarcerated youth: A group randomized controlled intervention trial. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, Article 792. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00792  

  Summary:

  The purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of the Power Source Program, a cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness training, on attentional task performance in incarcerated adolescents. Participants were randomized to either Power Source or an active control group that received an evidence-based cognitive-perception intervention focusing on attitudes and beliefs about substance use and violence, which was modified to exclude any skills or concepts that were under investigation in the Power Source intervention. Measures utilized include the Self Report of Offending (SRO) and the Attention Network Test (ANT). Results indicate that task performance degraded over time in all participants. The magnitude of performance degradation was significantly less in the Power Source vs. control arm. Further, within the Power Source arm, performance degraded over time in those with no outside-of-class practice time, but remained stable over time in those who practiced mindfulness exercises outside of the session meetings. Limitations include a high attrition rate and lack of specificity in effects on the subsystems of attention. Note: This article was not used in the rating process since it did not look at direct outcomes specified in the Disruptive Behavior Treatment (Child & Adolescent) topic area definition.

• Note: The following study was not included in rating The Power Source Program on the Scientific Rating Scale.

  Umbach, R., Raine, A., & Leonard, N. R. (2018). Cognitive decline as a result of incarceration and the effects of a CBT/MT intervention: A cluster-randomized controlled trial. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 45(1), 31–55. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854817736345 

   

  Summary:

  The study used the same sample as Leonard et al. (2013). The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of a group-based cognitive behavioral therapy/mindfulness training, Power Source. Participants were randomized to either Power Source or to an active control group that received an evidence-based cognitive-perception intervention focusing on attitudes and beliefs about substance use and violence, which was modified to exclude any skills or concepts that were under investigation in the Power Source intervention. Measures utilized include the emotional go/no-go task. Results indicate that performance on all outcome variables was significantly worse at follow-up compared with baseline. There were marginally significant group-by-time interactions. While the control group performance significantly declined in both cognitive control and emotion regulation, the Power Source group showed no significant decline in either outcome. Limitations include that only a subset of the original sample was analyzed due to a high attrition rate, the assessment of only one cognitive domain using a single task, and limited statistical support for protective effects. Note: This article was not used in the rating process since it did not look at direct outcomes specified in the Disruptive Behavior Treatment (Child & Adolescent) topic area definition.

• Norton, E., Boudrot, C., & Linick, J. (2025, July). A deep dive into a new program to transform youth justice. Symposium presentation at the Correctional Mental Health Conference of the National Commission on Correctional Healthcare. San Francisco, CA. Pre-recorded virtual presentation available to view here, which includes unpublished recidivism data on PS presented by the Texas Juvenile Justice Department: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lxCgf3luxq_Qu_TQXSYJa1xYCdgtOpvw/view?usp=share_link 

• Self Awareness and Recovery. (2025). OJJDP Enhancing school capacity to address youth violence grant performance report, July – December 2024. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iTKeAdnh4it7G6MHdN1FNN4L09H-x70g/view?usp=share_link  See pages 7+ for details on their use of Power Source and outcomes.

• Silitti, R., Riggins, G., Montgomery, C., & Linick, J. (2025, October). The power of collaboration: Clinician/credible messenger delivery of a youth self-regulation program. Symposium presented at the National Partnership for Juvenile Services Annual Conference. Orlando, FL. Slides can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_p7mvmTOPFkDAxbpOrim5wiAghlNjNty/view?usp=share_link