Some of us help specific kids, regularly, *and* criticize bad "help" that isn't here on Fornits.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men (and women) to do nothing.
Every time I talk to a parent about *not* using a Program, I recommend that they get their kid good, situation-appropriate, *reputable* help for their kid's problems.
That is doing a positive thing for those kids. It's getting them help that has a good track record for actually helping *without* the taint of a bunch of survivors alleging abuse.
Part of the reason I find these abuse allegations so easy to believe is that they are so reminiscent of the documented abuses that took place in mental hospitals for adults before the courts ruled that mental patients had to be provided treatment in the least restrictive environment.
When people can't leave a facility, you get a lot of these kinds of abuses--it's a facet of human nature amply demonstrated in the Stanford Prison Experiments.
"Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." -- Lord Acton
Once they ensured that prisoners and mental patients could not have their mail stopped---except for very short periods (usually less than a month) for mental patients if their psychiatrist felt certain correspondence would be harmful to that specific patient.
The "least restrictive environment" requirement enabled patients to appeal commitments, or appeal a commitment continuing, and increased the risk that abusers would get caught out by a patient an independent expert, retained by the patient or a loved one, had just ruled competent.
Bad places got shut down. Bad caregivers got shut out as bad risks for legal liability.
Unless, of course, you're a teenager whose parents have already decided they're totally screwed up. Then, because you can't legally challenge the commitment, and neither can other loved ones, and can't get examined by an independent expert---it's easy for the bad eggs to stay working in the system, owning the facilities, running the facilities.
The same old bad eggs, recycled over and over, running the same old fatally dysfunctional Program.
Kids that are addicted or mentally ill need treatment. Kids that are criminal need to be put away, humanely, where they can't hurt others and humanely rehabilitated if that's at all possible.
Kids whose disabilities seriously impact learning in ways that mainstreaming doesn't help may need boarding schools with a directed curriculum and special services.
By directed curriculum, I do *not* mean so-called "emotional growth."
Kids from horribly dysfunctional families may need therapy and schooling away from their fucked-up parents.
The Program---and it's all the same Program in every way that matters---is not an appropriate remedy for any of these problems.
Stockholm Syndrome and coercive persuasion and LGATs (or SGATs), invariably delivered in a one-size-fits-all machine--regardless of what is advertized, are no substitute for genuinely helpful, reputable responses, treatments, and solutions.
Advocating good, responsible treatment, targetted to the individual problems a specific patient has, is not a negative. It's a positive.
All patients (whether addicts or drug abusers, physically disabled, or mentally ill) deserve individually appropriate treatment in the least restrictive environment.
All special needs students deserve individually appropriate education in the least restrictive environment.
All people who misbehave criminally deserve humane punishment. All juveniles who misbehave criminally deserve humane punishment targetted towards rehabilitation.
The Programs can't deliver that.
We will not get a majority of facilities that serve adolescent people become quality facilities that are able to deliver, and able to send home people who need to go home, until we apply the least restrictive environment test to attendance at a residential facility in ways that give the child a right to a court-assigned representative to represent the child's best interests where they may diverge from the interests of the parents.
Parents should not have a "right" to place a child in a facility. They should be allowed to try to place the child in a facility if they believe it's in the child's best interests, but if the child disagrees, they should have the right to challenge the parental/facility assessment in family court.
If the determination of the court is that the parents are so opposed to the child remaining in the home that it is adverse to the child's interests to return there, and at the same time a facility is not the least restrictive environment able to effectively serve the child's needs, then the child should be placed in foster care and the parents assessed child support payments.
Too expensive? Not really. For one thing, parents are more likely to second-guess themselves if they know the courts will be second-guessing them. For another, the parents won't be allowed to dodge child support obligations. For a third, we provide these services to adults to protect *them* from bad care, the least we can do is afford our children the same protection.
Sticking your kid in an institution is a world away from sending him to the Boy Scouts' summer camp, or parochial school, or telling him whether he can play soccer or has to play baseball or be in the chess club.
Sticking your kid in an institution is a world away from spanking his butt or grounding him for getting in a fight with the neighbor kid or staying out after curfew. Spanking your kid on the butt with your hand is miles away from beating
Parental power over their children has limits to what is legitimate, and limits to what is legal. Unlimited, unchecked power to institutionalize the child is leaving children with lifelong injury in the form of PTSD.
Parents must not be allowed to permanently, seriously injure their children in the name of "saving" them. Morally, the parents have no right.
Now we just have to bring the law in line with morality. When we can get kids placed for bad reason, or no reason, or placed wrongly, *out* just by providing them an advocate with the legal power to go before the judge on the child's behalf to contest the placement, we'll be able to shut the Programs down through attrition.
Quality, appropriate care in the least restrictive environment.
That's a positive, not a negative.
Julie
