Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Troubled Teen Industry

Programs and Politics: a connection?

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Che Gookin:
Keep going with that angle Wootie, you are almost there...

Though I'll maintain that public programs aren't any better than private ones in terms of safety and efficiency. Not sure I'm even comfortable with the idea of efficiency being bandied around with troubled people. Has a very Sigma Six sort of flavor with it.

psy:

--- Quote from: "blombrowski" ---I'm not trying to indicate that capitalism is bad.  It's capitalism that respects the parent as an individual customer, that I was referring to.  One of the differences between the TTI and publicly funded residential treatment, are the lengths to which facilities compete over individual parents, by catering to those individuals selling points.

Facilities in the TTI are more exposed to the whims of the private marketplace than publicly funded residential treatment.  Truth campaigns against UHS have had no impact on their market share, yet truth campaigns against WWASP, Élan, FFS, and Aspen has.
--- End quote ---

I think you have a very valid point, but at the same time I don't think that public programs are any better.  Parent choice versus Government choice.  I'd almost tend to err with Parent Choice on this one being an absence of kid's choice.  I mean aren't they still digging up bodies at that government funded place in Florida.  China's "treatment" programs for video game "addiction" hardly sound very nice and I'd tend to think most of the abuse at these public facilities goes unnoticed a lot more than at private facilities.  It's not like i'm trying to argue one is better than the other. I'm just saying they're both bad but often in different ways.

blombrowski:
Bad but in different ways, I think sums it up.  But in definable ways that are predictable given who the customer is in each case.  The kinds of reform that are achievable in each system are also different in terms of scope and speed that are also predictable.

There is an ethos in the TTI that says, "let the market sort it out", the "good programs" will rise to the top, and the "bad programs" will go out of business.  The TTI is largely in the business of alleviating parental anxiety about whether or not their child will grow into acceptable adults - that may have all kinds of negative side effects as programs try to achieve that goal at market price point (i.e. the price that parents are willing to pay that programs are willing to stay in business for) but there's an identifiable "product" in the process.

In the public sector system, the product is mostly centered around public safety (regardless whether it's the mental health, juvenile justice, or foster care system) and less about the individual youth.  And as the customers are often the same people as the licensors, as long as programs meet minimum standards (defined by the state agency), those programs are likely to stay in business.

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