I would like to thank Act Up, for bringing this discussion to the table, because there seems to be some misinformation and misunderstandings about the issue of "residential treatment", and "treatment" in general.
The simplest way to tel the difference is if the "treatment" is voluntary. Involuntary treatment is an oxymoron. Involuntary treatment may in fact be therapeutic
If you define "therapeutic" as "covering up (not actually fixing) some problems while creating entirely new ones" then, yes, I would agree. If a person does not want help, involuntary treatment implies coersion, the breaking of one's will (via a combination of various pressures and/or thought reform and/or "Behavior Modification"). Nothing is fixed, and more problems are created. Personally, I don't see that as ever being therapeutic.
, but it is not treatment, it is punishment with side effects.
Remember that in many of the regulated programs like Summit, a good portion of the kids who go there are sent by state or local child welfare agencies. The proliferation of "programs" is not as simple as parents not wanting to do their job, sometimes it's a matter of the parents being incapable of doing their job, and the state being able to find adequate families to do the job for the birth parents.
Regulated programs can be just as programmatic as the unregulated ones, but their funding sources and the way they are able to hang onto the kids for so long are different.
Youth can be in a "program" truly voluntarily (I know of many kids at Summit over 18)
There are kids that are truly voluntarily in WWASP programs. It happened in Straight inc. as well. Have you never heard of learned helplessness? What about the brainwashing? What about using parental relationships (threats of being disowned for example) as a bargaining chip? Howabout when they tell you that you have no rights and refuse to let you leave with any of _your_ money, property, clothing, food, water, shelter... Howabout when the local cops are on the take (or are part of the program owner's family). Don't be naive. "voluntary" means absolutely jack shit when we are talking about programs that DO use brainwashing... and talking to a girl who is fresh out of program who says there was no "abuse" (often a term redefined in program, as it becomes normal), who you just happen to be fucking... I don't see how that is ANY indication at all of the quality of a program, and the fact that you seem to know so many kids at Summit, and have such a positive opinion (or simply nothing negative to say) is very suspect to me. Considering you are in New York, the wonderful bastion of safe places...
Take a look at this regulated, and still open, place, that just happens to fit kids with shock collars (and gives the parents the remote... LITERALLY).... As well as having automated shock devices. Yes. Governmnt oversight can work wonders. There is a 27 page report by the NYDE detailing the abuses. The government documented it well, but that's about all they did.
If the philosophy is based on following a program that can't be deviated from, it doesn't matter who's running the "program", the program will be abusive.
Oh. So you mean each individual should have his own unique program to follow. Oh.. Sure. That works just brilliantly. That way, even after you complete your requirements for "level 2" they can still hold you back based on the subjective whim of the staff and/or program owner. After all. Programs have a real motivation to push kids through quickly. :roll:
This industry, everything associated with it, from the deepest of it's cultic roots in Synanon, est, and Lifespring, needs to be cut out and discarded. It is a cancer. Shut down a school and it grows 5 new heads as the staff scatter to the four corners of the earth and start their own programs. Or the former studnets, so convinced that the abuse helped them, who decide they want to dedicate their lives to "helping" others. Some systems are so innately broken that they CANNOT be fixed.
If the philosophy is based on harm-reduction, keeping kids safe, and only accepting kids who want to be there then actual treatment can occur.
Perhaps it
can occur, but there is no guarantee at all that it will. Even when there is government oversight is there, it is often riddled with incompetence, corruption, laziness, beurocracy, lack of jurisdiction or a blend of all those wonderful aspects of government. Perhaps... perhaps, if there was competant oversight with an in-depth knowledge of methods of indirect influence, coercion, thought reform, and cult history, there could be a chance of avoiding brainwash camps masquerading as treatment.