Anonymous: I appreciate your forthrightness and courage to come on a highly emotional board such as this. But let's break down your analysis of your stay there:
I have seen some unethical things happen there and quite honestly I was appaled at some actions of SOME of the staff memebers.
OK, so let's find out just what these unethical actions were. Just about every major academic or professional field has some guideline of ethics. Let's say, a doctor was highly professional and effective 90% of the time, but the rest of the time he engaged in some ethical violations. He would be gone. Finished. Same with any hospital or law office, if 5% of their time was spent engaging in appalling, unethical actions, and it was brought to attention, their licenses would most likely be suspended. So please, let me know what my friend can expect while in there. I want specifics. What where the actions?
"As with any place that a child is forced to be they make it worse then it truly is."
Children whine and complain if they're stuck doing the laundry for an afternoon. If someone has signed away their lives for two years, it's been taken to a whole new level. I'm particularly disturbed by the lack of phone contact, and its definition as a revocable privilege. Their website claims that it can be taken away as a result of not doing homework. Bull; the staff can use any arbitrary reason to deny communication of a child to a parent and then blame it on said child. They can say it's for not doing homework and who's to challenge them? The child has been silenced.
"Most of the students who are sent to the family are at the point that the next step for them is jail, a mental institution or even death and in that comparison the family sounds the best to me."
Who says? The death alarm's been rung many a time in justifying these conditions. Anonymous, I am happy that you made it, but perhaps it was something innate within you that was awakened and not what this $40,000 a year set of trailers on a landfill did for you. When you went, it was all still trailers, right? And finally in 2003 they got enough money to build some ramshackle dorms according to their own website. And you yourself have pointed out appalling, unethical things, and guess what? These alone don't justify the existence of a place like this. Those few good counselors you encountered can find work somewhere else; NYC is always looking for good people. Not the middle of an upstate landfill 70 miles from the nearest cell phone service.
Raj