I don't see that being pro regulation is being pro the industry. To me regulation and education need to go hand in hand. The power of places to do harm needs to be decreased with specific enforcible rules, while more information is given about the overall damage done in a bid to get the public to vote with their feet.
It does become a slippery slope when organizations like NATSAP are at the bargaining table but by the same token it is extremely dangerous that a program can potentially put a kid in actual physical peril or inadequately feed them without it being a breach if any specifci law.
Pro regulation is not pro industry. NATSAP is a joke, they will make overtures to engage in regulation, but the process of "break 'em down, build them up" is not going to change, this is how these programs operate. NATSAP is a worthless seal of approval. Kids die in NATSAP approved programs through neglect or brutal physical torture, and the programs maintain their NATSAP certification. JCAHO licensure is being recognized as useless, too.
There's a concept of "program drift", where a program starts off with the loftiest of intentions to save troubled youth. Covenant Health, shortly after the purchase of Peninsula Village from Ft. Sanders in Tennessee, brought in some highly respected psychiatric professionals, one from Duke, as consultants to create a safe, therapeutic program that would work. The pros tried to set-up the ideal facility, but what monkey-wrenched the works? The bottom line-watching accountants, the money counters who hired unqualified counselors, cut corners, and eventually caused the respected advisers to give up their consultant positions in disgust. Program drift is also what happens when an RTC or WTF is busted for abuse, neglect, or homicide. After the program gets the usual "don't do it again" from the Court, they clean up the violence for a time and try to avoid the same allegations. Time, along with high-turnover rates of counselors and clinicians, causes the program to drift back down the slope into abusive practices Without further outside agency interference, the old ways of physical, mental, and medical neglect re-surface like they never left. The reason is simple: Restraint and abuse of the kids is a convenience for the under-educated and burned-out staff.
Oz girl, I agree that a pro-regulation stance does not make you pro-industry. There are wonderful facilities available (my daughter attended one, the clinicians called her a "joy to work with in the milieu, eager to interact in group, often giving affectionate support to fellow patients who were having difficulties" For reasons beyond the facility's control, as well as my wife's, our daughter's biological father sent her to PV, (like going from a holiday spa to Auschwitz) where she was labeled "treatment resistant", "Narcissistic", then abused, viciously taken to the ground by five large women in what PV considered a "restraint" - in full view of her mother. What does Peninsula Village fear more than an unruly patient? A parent who photographs an obviously criminal assault on a child. My wife was banned from family therapy and phone contact with her daughter until we got the child out of that pit. The girl spent six months in the lockdown level of PV before walking out free on 12/14/06, and she's back in her old high school, an honor role student, and working on the demons PV left .
What happened to the girl at the other facility who wanted to be involved in all therapy, helped her peers, and, far from being "treatment resistant", as PV insisted, she was a joy to work with and well-liked. The answer is simple: PV has no individualized treatment, and they perform a "process" on every kid, regardless if the kid is there for ADD, eating disorders, depression, or convicted as an adult for sodomizing a female escort with a baseball bat, or convicted as an adult for conspiracy to commit mass murder on a Columbine level. They're all thrown into the same milieu, and THAT'S insane.
The good programs will not fear regulation, they'll welcome it. My daughter was given the choice to stay in the first, benevolent program. If she had asked to leave, they wouldn't have kept her, and this place is in Maryland, where it's not legally required.
Given the choice of being sent home to live with her alcoholic, abusive father, she took the Maryland facility. After we got our girl out of PV, she said she could use a trip back to the Maryland facility for "decompression" and some restorative therapy. I guess that shows the difference between the "wretched, all for cash" programs and the truly therapeutic ones.
