Our Values

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging underpin everything we do at St. John’s. You can read more about our commitment here:

St. John’s Organizational Imperatives

Mission Directed : Everything we do at St. John's is in support of our mission and in accord with our service values.
Mutual Respect : We respect the inherent dignity and worth of all with whom we work. We embrace individual differences and cultural diversity. We reject, categorically, discrimination of any kind, including but not limited to racial/ethnic, religious, age, gender and sexual identity.
Integrity : St. John's operates on trust; amongst clients and staff, and between the agency and funders, regulators and the public at large. Essential to trust in integrity, both personal and organizational. Integrity, therefore, is a non-negotiable at St. John's.
Frugality : We believe it is everybody's job at St. John's to be a good steward of agency resources. We are efficient. We avoid waste and economize wherever/whenever we can.
Responsibility, Accountability & Performance Excellence : We do our assigned jobs to the best of our ability, meeting our responsibilities, commitments and timeframes. We are committed to a continuous assessment and renewal process, and an insistence of service excellence.

Safety & Order : Physical safety and emotional security are essential conditions for the health, education and development of the youth we serve. Our first consideration is always youth safety and ensuring an orderly and therapeutic program environment.
Relationships : We use healthy, authentic and humanizing youth/staff relationships to promote healing, growth and well-being.
Family : We believe that home and family are our youth's greatest natural resource. Therefore, a sustained and concentrated focus on family strengthening and permanency planning is essential. All our services must be family friendly, family-centered and, whenever possible, family-driven.
Education : Education is a primary force for individual and collective progress and achievement in American society. We are committed to providing our youth with a broad array of quality opportunities to maximize their personal, academic and vocational potential.
Justice : The concept of justice runs deep in adolescents. Our youth, whose lives have been dramatically impacted by a variety of injustices and transgressions, tend to have a heightened sense of justice. Their perceptions of how fairly they are being treated mediates their acceptance, or rejection, of our message of healing, growth and well-being. The therapeutic milieu cannot be achieved without justice.

Belief : We believe in our youth...in their essential goodness, in their capacity to endure, heal, grow and succeed.
Joy & Laughter : Joy & Laughter is a life-affirming blessing that radiates outward and embraces the hearts and imaginations of the youth we serve. It lightens their load, strengthens their immune system and serves as a powerful antidote to suffering and sadness. We give it freely.
Rights & Responsibilities : The "rights" of our youth and families stand squarely and unambiguously on their own. At the same time, progress can be expected only when those rights are accompanied by an active acceptance of responsibilities, commensurate with the capacity to self-govern. All our youth and families have a voice at St. John's and share with us responsibility for their success.
Community : St. John's is an intentional community. We conduct our day-to-day activities through strong social contracts that explicitly emphasize program values and the responsibility of all staff to engage our youth and their families in a sustained, disciplined effort to succeed in life. This web of caring, collaborative relationships creates a sense of belonging and an atmosphere of trust, security and well-being. it is, by definition, therapeutic.