On 2004-11-15 22:22:00, Anonymous wrote:
"You mentioned Arizona? There are NO programs for kids in Arizona that allow a parent to send them to. The kids have to sign an agreement to go and stay. Even that doesn't hold up, they can still leave after a couple of days if the rules are too strict.
Now, if they are arrested, they can be a guest of Joe Arpaio and the juvenile chain gang out digging graves in 115 degree summer heat. Yes, Sheriff Arpaio was overwhelmly re-elected!"
Well, I'm glad that Arizona has sensible laws, and I hope those laws are enforced.
On the chain gang thing, people on the chain gang have at least had due process of law before being convicted and sentenced. The summer heat is different depending on the humidity level and whether the person is acclimated to local conditions.
When I lived in New York as a child, it just didn't seem that cold in the winter. When I moved to South Carolina in January it felt like spring had come early. Now, winter in Georgia feels damned cold, but summer feels mostly okay. And I have lived in the South without AC, as a child and as an adult. I have AC now, but I haven't always.
I'd be real concerned if the inmates didn't have hats, sunscreen or appropriate clothes, and lots and lots of clean water and gatorade (or tablets for the electrolytes).
But just the hard work in the heat, after due process, for locals that are locally acclimated, is not necessarily unhealthy.
We marched and sweated out in the South Carolina heat in band camp and band practice, all through my high school years. We were a competition band, and we marched *a lot*---and carrying heavy brass instruments. And doing countless sit-ups to strengthen our gut muscles and improve our breath support for playing. And doing countless punishment situps, in the heat, when we screwed up.
We did have people drop from heat stroke, but we had a nurse on hand to take care of the few that did, and we had a lot to drink, and we all wore hats and sunscreen.
My problem with the various "boot camps" is not that they make the kids *work*---it's that they're frequently negligent about *how* they do it, and what the kid's other problems are or aren't, and kids sustain permanent damage and sometimes die.
There's no accountability at the "boot camps"---and there's too much secrecy where bad things can happen and after they happen it's just the kid's word against the word of staffers who swear the kid is lying---and nobody really knows when you have a kid lying or guilding the lily and when you have staffers or owners lying or spinning because there's no Sunshine---nobody really knows.
But it's not the *kid* keeping everything secret while it's going on----and that suggests to me that it's not the kid who has the most to hide.
We need Reform.
We need Oversight.
We need clear Standards.
We need Enforcement of those standards.
And we need Sunshine so that it's no longer a question of who you believe, it's plain as day who's doing what to whom.
It concerns me that the Programs who preach so much of accountability and standards and clear and certain consequences for the kids are so resistant to accepting the same structural framework for themselves.
The Programs preach accountability to authority and respect for that authority and obedience to authority to and for the kids, but they wiggle and dodge and evade as much as they possibly can to keep from being accountable to higher authority themselves.
If nothing else, the "do as I say, not as I do" effect of the Program owners' and staffers' behavior has to be counterproductive to the learning experience for those of the kids who are appropriately placed and could otherwise benefit from a structured, consistent environment (if it was being done *right*).
I am sure there are some kids out there who would sign themselves in and genuinely prefer a hard but fair environment to the crazy inconsistency and arbitrariness they get at home. Crazy and arbitrary inconsistency is part of what makes ordinary pain-in-the-butt teens into extraordinary pains in the butt. There are kids who would pick a "boot" school that was fair and consistent over their own home environment or their own local school.
There are real juvenile delinquents who do really bad things, and get convicted after a fair trial, who *need* to be locked up.
There are mentally ill juveniles who need a certain kind of residential treatment.
They don't all need the *same* treatment.
And there has to be accountability of the programs and the parents to higher authority to ensure that the kids are going to the right place, or *not* going into residential care where it's inappropriate, and that the places that do provide residential care do it right and do not abuse and neglect the kids.
This is what makes me most suspicious of the programs and their advocates that come and post here.
If they're so lily white clean, *why* are they fighting so hard to avoid having to be accountable to higher authority? If they're helping so many kids and doing the best anyone can do, *why* fight so hard to avoid licensing requirements and standards and inspections.
If they're as clean and good as they tell us they are, it seems to me that they would be saying, "Fine, let's work together to make the list of rules and standards, let's work to get the licensing in place with those high standards, and let's work to get a process of frequent surprise inspections in place. We're quality care providers and we want parents and our community to be confident that they're getting what they pay for and their kids are getting the very best care we can provide for the money."
It seems to me that they would be seeing this as an opportunity and not a threat---namely, if the kids *are* being appropriately placed and it *is* hard sometimes to provide quality at what the parents can afford, that they would eagerly embrace standards and licensing and surprise inspections and take that as an opportunity to request funding assistance for families with financial need to ensure that quality of care can always be maintained.
Instead, they're squealing like a stuck pig at the very hint of serious, effective regulatory oversight.
And for me, that is the single factor that *most* undermines the programs' credibility versus the teens who are claiming to have been abused and neglected in those programs.
If it wasn't generally true, it seems to me that the programs would be falling all over themselves to *get* the licensing and standards and surprise inspections and enforcement to *prove* that they're what they claim to be.
It seems to me that if the programs were being as helpful to the kids that go there as they claim to be, that they would be falling all over themselves to help set up a *good* uniform regulatory structure and using that dialogue as an opportunity to request funding for good, hard research into the effectiveness of different treatment methods for different problems to get good hard numbers on what strategies work best and which ones are ineffective.
For people with nothing to hide, the program folks are acting awfully cagey.
And that's *why* I believe *most* of the claims of abuse and neglect I hear from the adults who used to be kids in one program or another.
I'm not against residential care, where appropriate.
I'm against *bad* residential care, inappropriate placements, and ineffective or harmful treatments.
Timoclea