A few notes about this paper.
1. It is a paper that was ultimately approved by the board of Youth MOVE, CAFETY, and AACRC. Two organizations comprised of young people who have been in residential programs (defined broadly), and an organization of residential programs. To the point about notable steps, this paper in itself is notable. The recognition by residential providers that they have at times done a shitty job, and aren't calling the youth that are calling them out on doing a shitty job liars and manipulators is progress but...
2. While the organization may be progressive (namely the leadership that comprises the board that makes the decisions for the organization), that says nothing about their general membership (i.e. Chris Bellonci, their current President was the provider who testified at the hearing with Kat Whitehead and Jon-Martin Crawford and has been an expert witness in a number of lawsuits involving programs, but if you go through their membership list, there are a number of programs that should pop out as problematic)
3. One of the programs that has been held out as a residential program that "gets" youth-guided care (and would be considered one of those notable examples), an AACRC member, has a very interesting recent history. They are an agency that runs all kind of services in the New York City metropolitan area (foster care, group homes, and an RTC in the foster care system, group homes in the foster care and mental health systems, juvenile detention prevention, a clinic, family support, wraparound services, etc) Their current CEO, who sits on the board of AACRC "gets it". When he was in charge of their main residential campus, he instituted a number of reforms, like youth running their own treatment planning meetings, holding an agency-wide retreat that includes youth and staff to help make changes to the program, establishing a regular youth council on the grounds, and hiring a youth advocate. He no longer deals with the day-to-day operations of the facility. The person in charge of youth development who has been charged to oversee the youth-guided reforms works out of their Bronx office and not on the ground of their Westchester campus.
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.
Furthermore, residential treatment is their least profitable division within their agency. They lose money hand over fist providing residential care (all their funds are through State contracts, which don't cover the costs of operations), and the CEO's time is devoted to fundraising to make up that gap.
So there's the residential providers "meaning well" part. There's so much more to say on this topic. And I hope that this can actually be a conversation, particularly around how do you make this kind of situation better? Because ultimately, this is the kind of program that paper is directed at, not necessarily your average "parent-choice" program.
P.S. - I saw this program do a presentation on youth-guided care on two separate consecutive occasions. The first one, didn't even have a youth presenter and was a sugar-coated version. After one of my colleagues called the CEO about how hypocritical the presentation itself was, the next time they did the presentation about a month later, one of their former youth advocates did the presentation with them, and the pure blunt honesty about the current situation came out.