On 2004-01-25 06:30:00, Anonymous wrote:
"I am in the process of opening my very own school/center for children and youth. I am interested in being able to control the children without doing too much damage in the long run, as changing the behavior in emergency situations is best for all. I am wondering if former students could offer any advice in achieving my goal? I think that former students would know how far to go without hurting. "
I'm going to assume you're trying to do it right. There *is* a place for residential treatment, done right.
First of all, you should decide which population of kids you're trying to serve. You should not mix solely criminal kids with solely mentally ill kids with healthy, non-criminal kids or any of the three with kids who are both mentally ill and criminal.
All four of those categories should be in separate facilities.
I know more about mental illness than some of the other causes of residential treatment:
If the kids are mentally ill, they should not be in a locked portion of the facility unless they are an immediate danger to themselves or others--actively suicidal or psychotic. The rest, including depressives and psychotics stable on medication, should be in an unlocked portion of the facility resembling a halfway house, permitted to go into town according to a schedule of rules, and expected to follow the rules---but without having those rules enforced by locked doors or gates, nor by rural inaccessibility.
All the kids should be able to send and receive mail from anyone at all times *except* for unstabilized depressives and psychotics, whose incoming and outgoing mail should be screened *solely* for abuse and threats.
All classes should be taught by teachers with valid certification *or* a bachelors degree majoring or minoring (at least) in the subject(s) they teach.
Children should not be required to do more unpaid work in or for the facility than an ordinary family would require in household chores---maybe an hour a day. Anything more should be paid to the kid at minimum wage, with all the taxes and paperwork done.
Medication should be prescribed only by a licensed psychiatrist with a specific doctor/patient relationship with that kid, and the kid should see the doctor at least once every three months if stable on medication, at least once a month if the kid's medication is still being stabilized. Kids who are not stable on medication or not functional should see a licensed clinical psychologist for their therapy.
Parents should *never* be promised that the facility will cure their child's mental illness. Instead, parents should be told that the goal is to get and keep their child functional enough to be physically safe and for the child to make as much educational progress, while there, as a mentally healthy child with the same IQ and educational attainment would make in the same period of time in a good public school.
Additionally, the goal should be to improve the child's coping skills enough that, upon graduation, the most he or she will need is continuing to take his/her maintenance dose of medication (if needed, depending on what illness the kid has) and a visit with a psychiatrist every three months to follow his/her condition.
If the kids are criminal but not mentally ill, they should not be therapized. Find some non-criminal job or career they'd be willing to do, train them for it, and provide halfway-house type support for them to get a job, move out, and become emancipated minors. They're probably just as eager to get out from under parental control as their parents are to have them out of the house---and that's your carrot to get their buy-in. Once they have a skill and a job, they can save a downpayment on an apartment, or find a rental room, or a trailer, and move out.
Reconciliation will take years, and won't be helped long-term by trying to rush it. Plant the seeds, get them out there making a living, and if they break the laws and end up in jail, that's their lookout. But out from under parental authority, earning their own living, a lot of them may surprise you. There's a tremendous maturing effect to the process of earning your own way and paying your own bills.
For lawbreaking kids who aren't mentally ill, the goal should be getting them making their own paycheck and moved out on their own. After that, their encounters with the law are their own problem.
Most of the ones who will end up in prison after you teach them a skill and get them in a job and out you couldn't have saved, anyway.
The ones who are just rebelling because they're tired of being kids and not controlling their own lives, or because what they want for themselves and what their parents want for them are very different, or because their parents' lifestyle (relgion, friends, culture) isn't for them---those will cope and be fine---and would only be damaged by trying to force them into a Stepford Kids mold.
If the kids are substance abusers, you want to try to keep the substance off your grounds, you want to search the kids upon reentry to the facility after trips into town, you want to drug test regularly. Drug in town, get grounded. Break grounding, get expelled and shipped home. It's okay to hold kids who test positive for physically addictive drugs in lockdown under qualified medical supervision and support while they go through withdrawal.
Screen for, diagnose, and treat any underlying mental illness as with above for mentally ill kids---some mentally ill people substance abuse because they don't know they have a mental illness and are trying to self-medicate. Only way to keep them from drugging is to properly diagnose and treat the underlying illness.
Other than that, treat as with the criminal kids---does the kid want to go to college, or does he/she want a votech skill and to get out from under parental authority ASAP? Provide whichever the kid wants.
Additionally, provide scrupulously truthful information about medical risks of various street drugs, and scrupulously truthful information about the federal laws and laws in your state.
After they get out, they'll break the law or not, they'll relapse or not. 12-step is crap---long-term studies show it has no more clinical effect than no treatment at all.
The only real way to treat substance abuse is to treat the underlying mental illness, if there is one, or help the abuser find stuff that is more rewarding to do than get all fucked up.
In the case of mentally healthy rebellious teen substance abusers, that means addressing their natural feelings of helplessness over the sober portions of their lives in the face of adult power and authority---by helping them take that power over their own sober lives for themselves.
Your problem with all of this is that none of this is what parents really want when they commit a kid to a TBS---what they want is control---the kid molded into the kind of grownup they always wanted instead of the kind of grownup the *kid* wants to become.
Which is why there needs to be some external authority in there between the parents and the TBS whose job is to advocate on behalf of the adult the *kid* dreams of becoming.
