General Interest > The Melting Pot

Interesting Cafety Article

<< < (2/4) > >>

Pile of Dead Kids:
I'm just lollin' about "Youth-directed". Yeah, the junior staff doing restraints, that's youth-directed treatment all right!

Che Gookin:

--- Quote ---Recently in a presentation she shared that staff at the residential campus held a meeting where they decided that they were going to re-institute the level system, and neglected to invite her, since they knew that she would insist that the youth on campus would have to be part of that decision.

So you have a CEO who "gets it", a youth development person who "gets it", but staff who are working there day-to-day, basically telling the CEO and the youth development person that they need more "tools" to "control the milleu", namely coercive points and level systems.

This is a program that deals almost exclusively with youth in the child welfare system, many of whom would be placed in our lovely juvenile justice system in New York State if not for this program or be stuck bouncing from foster home to foster home or group home to group home, which happens anyway.
--- End quote ---

Sounds about par for the course. Maintaining such an open environment would take a huge amount of ongoing effort on the part of the youth, staff, and administration. The entire facility would have to be goal driven towards the pursuit of attaining a better outcome for the youths being cared for. That's hard to do when you have the typical power control issues at play thrown in with what I'm guessing are some fairly dynamic residents.

Very difficult indeed.

Che Gookin:

--- Quote ---Residential programs have taken notable steps toward addressing these concerns and implementing youth guided care.
--- End quote ---

I'd also suggest changing this line to, "Some Residential programs" as the above sentence makes it seem like all programs in general have been taking notable steps.

Whooter:
Young people who have been placed in residential settings recognize that residential providers typically operate with the best interests of the young people they work with at heart. .........even in the most extreme situations when the measures being used upon the young people in their care are abusive. While such cases may not typify the field of residential treatment, they do highlight legitimate and serious practice concerns.

The above statement indicates that children who have gone to programs realize that programs and staff have the best interest of the children at heart and that although abuse does occur within the industry it is not typical of program practices.  

This runs counter to what many posters here on fornits believe and further shows that the feelings towards programs here on fornits is grossly outdated and they are out of touch with the current kids entering these places.  I think as we bring in more of the current information about programs and let some of the old thoughts and practices of programs like Straight go fornits will be brought more inline with current practices and thinking.



...

Whooter:

--- Quote ---Entry phase  -- Most often the decision to place a young person in a residential program is made without any conversation with the youth.
Treatment phase  -- The degree to which youth are engaged in determining their own course of treatment is variable across agencies, but often they are passive recipients, with adults setting their goals set for them based on the reasons for their placement.

Transition phase –- In traditional residential settings graduation from a program is often based on the completion of a step or level program, not necessarily on an ongoing process of evaluating whether the youth is ready to return to the community.
--- End quote ---

The most critical here, for me, in my experience was the Transition Phase.  Trying to provide a seamless transition form the safety of the program back into the real world is a difficult task, as I had witnessed.  I think more than the other phases this one would benefit the most from the childs input.



...

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page