We have agents on conductdisorders.com, which are a parent-forum. While they tend to overmedicate, many of them have come to the same conclusion. The TBS became warehousing. Some of them think that it kept their kids alive through a dangerous phase and the matureness gained during the program will see to that they will avoid death.
Some if you scan their "Parent Emeritus" forum, you will discover that some of them have no contact for years and other are following their adult kids to jail - time after time after time until the kid him- or her-self turn around.
Many of them have been forced to accept that a drug problem cannot be solved until the drug-user decide it is time.
So we have also tried to find out how the best approach to the world is after being locked up. Not because we have TBS's in Denmark, but we do have Afghanistan. The soldiers - many of them 18 to 20 years of age - return home suffering from
PTSD. We now know that if you cut a person off from the real world and place them in a non-normal environment like a war-zone or a wilderness program or a TBS, there is a risk of PTSD.
We have learned that people returning home from an intense environment have to go through a transition-phase before entering the normal world. They also need free access to counseling for a number of years. An intense environment can be a war-zone where you can be shot but it can also be a program where there is opened a 6 lane highway into the darkest corners of the human mind. In a non-professional group therapy session which is the norm in most TBS's due to the cost of qualified staff, real damage can be inflicted because the normal psychological shield we all have are forced away during the lower levels, so the patients are vulnerable.
You have to go back to when she was released from the TBS. What did she or you do beside writing a home contract? Did you go to counseling? Did you shield her from most of the daily decisions other youth have to decide on? A TBS is a kind of
operant conditioning chamber. The choices are few so she could concentrate on solving her problem guided by the staff outside the chamber. If you suddenly release people from such a box after a lenghty period what then.
We keep our soldiers in a camp in Denmark for a month when they return where their families can visit them any time. We have improved our communication with family while abroad. They have access to support-hotlines for the rest of their lives. We do a number of things, but still they turn up as criminals or are found dead. We are still in a process to learn, so I have not the golden solution to your problem.
But I feel that you have skipped the adjustment phase when she returned home. She need an out-of-the-box experience in an environment open and supportive, but at some distance from the temptation she is poorly equipped to handle.
That is the reason for my suggestion to her future so she is ready to go to art college, once she return.