Fornits
Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform => The Troubled Teen Industry => Topic started by: kpickle39 on June 03, 2003, 12:23:00 PM
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Does anyone out there have any information on the Youth Challenge Academy's? There appear to be nationwide, with one located in Starke Florida.
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The Youth Challenge Program in Louisiana is operated by the Louisiana National Guard. It is a 17 month program. Students are provided with guidance on taking the GED through 5 months of in class prepartaions. The remaining 12 months are spent on some type of vocational training with a mentor assigned to each student.
All of this is done at one of two facilities operated by the Louisiana National Guard. The teens who wish to attend complete an application and are interviewed and then based on the interview either accepted or not. During the interview they do ask the teen if they want to be a part of the program, if they do not, they will not take them. So, being a part of the program is voluntary.
http://www.layouthchallenge.org (http://www.layouthchallenge.org)
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Carey, are you sure it's actually voluntary? I don't know anything about the program or the people who run it or how much lattitude the individual facilities have. But I have to point out that Straight, and similar programs, always claim their clients are enroled voluntarily.
They use very euphemistic terms to describe the process. They say that the client receives an evaluation. Translated, the client is sequestered in a small, windowless room with, maybe, a chair and then interrogated and brow beat till they confess and sign zee papers. (I signed the first ones "Mickey Mouse", which really pissed them off... some hours later, I finally caved)
Once inside, it's fools play to tell anyone you're being held against your will or that you're anything but pleased as punch with the whole thing. A couple of years of that and a lot of people actually begin to believe it.
Our youth can not understand why society chooses to criminalize a behavior with so little visible ill effect or adverse social impact... These young people have jumped the fence and found no cliff.
Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse
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It claims to be a voluntary program. All I know is what they profess in their literature...and we all know how deceptive some literature can be.
Here is their phone number. 1-800-CAMP-KID
I have called and asked them to fax me information on their program. I suggest anyone else who wants information to do the same.
After what my boys have been through, I would not be able to endorse any residential program due to the uncertainty and risks that lay within.
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Ginger,
I have recieved the paper work from Youth Challenge Program. If you have a fax number I will foward it to you.
Carey
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Thanks y'all - I'll contact the youth challenge folks and see if I can get some mailed info. They also have a website, although I don't have the guy's card that is a "counsler" there. I think most of them are ex-military types. Just the people that I want my son haning around with...(not)