No, you get real.
I understand that you had some serious problems as a teen and have grown up quite a bit.
Now, even though you don't know me from Adam, I'd like to challenge you to grow up just a little bit more.
First, accept that almost none of us are claiming that there *aren't* situations---such as mental illness where the person is unstable and dangerous to self or others where hospitalization is necessary, or even just juvenile delinquency where the behavior is so bad that incarceration is appropriate.
There are maybe an odd handful that would want to shut down all residential treatment, but that's not me, and that's not *most* of the Program-skeptics on Fornits.
Second, accept that if you were actively violent and dangerous (as you've implied with the domestic violence calls), that most people here would agree with you that residential treatment or some period of incarceration (whichever the situation justified) was probably appropriate *for you*.
The third part is where I'm asking you to stretch, and pardon me if I sound patronizing, it's just hard to guage what the *right* tone should be when I don't know you----I'd like to ask you to consider the possibility that *some* kids get sent to facilities in cases where the kid is *not* dangerously mentally ill and *not* violent and *not* in danger of anything much but being a serious pain in the butt for the step-parent he or she doesn't like.
In a lot of cases, and these are the ones that a lot of us critics would *most* like to prevent, you have a stepparent who is willing to pay in the neighborhood of $5k a month just to get to snuggle up to the parent *without* the kid who hates him being an emotionally disruptive pain in their marriage.
And the whole problem with that is that the bio parent has a voluntarily undertaken obligation to the kid and the kid was there first. Personally, I think if the custodial parent marries someone the kid loathes, the parent is the creep, not the kid. Parenthood comes with obligations. I say this as a parent and a veteran of divorce (thankfully a divorce without kids--had our daughter in my second marriage.)
A very bad personal choice is not grounds to make your life easier by institutionalizing your child.
But it is happening. And those of us who are trying to stop it are addressing a *real* social problem---not trying to keep persons like yourself who needed residential care from getting it.
Fourth--the other thorny social problem involved in this industry is that while some children, such as yourself, have apparently been well-served, there are reasonable indications that other children are *not* receiving quality care for their particular problems.
Please understand that the care that was appropriate for your particular problems would *not* be appropriate for a teen with different problems. Delinquency is different from substance abuse is different from mental illness is different from major cognitive disabilities. The various mental illnesses are different from each other. And there are some kids who have more than one challenging condition present, and some who don't.
For the children who *need* residential care, the goal is not to shut all the treatment centers down. The goal is to put inspections and rules and safeguards in place, and put enforcement mechanisms in place, so that there is *good* data on which treatments are best for which kids. We also need good data on how the various facilities are doing at meeting the standards. We need the facilities with some problems meeting the standards to either be brought into compliance or closed.
So the appropriate remedy, for example, for the school where you went might *NOT* be closure.
Instead, the appropriate remedies might be: regular surprise inspections to screen out false accusations from true ones; defined, professional guidelines about which extended family members the kids can write uncensored, unscreened letters to--basically any sober, non-criminal adult relative who would potentially be a fit guardian for children (Even adults who don't like the program are still automatically healthy models of sobriety and personal responsibility--and the kid's bond with even program-skeptic family members helps replace unhealthy friendships with solid long-term ties to family. The pluses *way* outweigh any minuses.); defined intake screening procedures to divert inappropriately placed kids into more appropriate alternative arrangements (like foster care, a relative's care, a mental hospital to be stabilized the right way and then reevaluated, a more appropriate facility if this one's very inappropriate for that problem); training and certification for staffers in the skills they need--like when and how to apply restraint as safely as possible, and the risks of even properly applied restraints.
One of the other possible *benefits* of reforming the teen residential care system would be that if there were safeguards to verify that the teen *needed* to be there, then various forms of federal aid would kick in to help defray the costs for the parents, removing pressure on them to recruit other parents, and removing the pressure for facilities to make inappropriate admissions just to fill beds.
For one thing, federal law requires the state and local authorities to provide each child with a free, appropriate education no matter what the child's problems are and no matter what the child has done.
What that means in practice is that for the schools that either already are in compliance with the prospective standards OR are willing to get in compliance, could get teachers, curriculum materials, and books and other resources to bring the quality of schooling in the facilities up to where it really ought to be.
Get Real---*appropriate* admissions, funding assistance for better education quality, trained and certified professional staffers providing safe, quality care, and diversion of inappropriately placed kids to *appropriate* alternatives would benefit *everybody*.
There are human beings who want to be abusive monsters to other people---but there are relatively few of them in the mass of more or less nice people that makes up ordinary humanity.
The teen residential care industry is dysfuntional, it could be a whole lot better, and it needs help getting reformed to *be* better.
I'm glad you were lucky enough to get good care when you needed it.
*Most* people who have paid attention to this industry, whether they're generally program-skeptics or program-supporters, agree that the industry needs improvement.
In the center, there *is* quite a bit of common ground here. If the programs could get past their knee-jerk responses and work *with* the critics to improve the whole system, a lot of good could be done.
Timoclea
