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2 november
No 1238
Effective residential group care
On a variety of interrelated grounds, and not without some justification, residential group care and treatment programs for children and youth have been under attack for several decades. As a result, many such programs have been closed, often without viable alternatives in place, and others have been severely curtailed. Yet the numbers of young people in residential group care settings have, after a brief pause around the mid-eighties, apparently resumed their seemingly inexorable upward climb (Children’s Defense Fund, 1990; Select Committee, 1989). In light of (1) the continuing scenario of family disintegration, with increasing numbers of addicted and other children growing toward adolescence without families even minimally equipped to deal with the challenges of normal child rearing, and (2) the unavailability of stable, supportive family foster placements for most such children, it does not appear likely that the need for such services will decline in the foreseeable future.
Currently, placement outside the home, particularly in group care, is widely viewed as representing a failure of the system involved (usually, child welfare), rather than as the targeted use of one of a continuum of legitimate intervention options that can enhance a young person’s life situation and, perhaps, that of his or her family. Why, in the face of our accelerating need as a society for all the childrearing help we can get, particularly for those young people whose natural families seem unable to meet their needs, have residential group care and treatment programs fallen into such disrepute, and what can we do about it?
There should be no dispute about the desirability of maintaining families intact whenever that is possible without hurting those involved. The development of family-and home-based services in recent years (Bryce, 1988) is a welcome innovation in that direction, although limitations (at least as such programs are currently being implemented) are also becoming evident (Summary, 1989; Wald, 1988). However, the magnitude of needs that do not appear to be amenable to in-home services is overwhelming. These include, for example, those represented by abandoned children (e.g., the increasing numbers of AIDS orphans), by children whose problems are so great as to be unmanageable even by marginally adequate parents with help (e.g., some addicted children), and by parents so debilitated by drugs or other factors as to be virtually nonfunctional in that role or intractably abusive (Ladner, 1990; Wells, in press).
The extent of these problems – current and
anticipated – has led to calls for a new look at out-of-home care as a
legitimate option (e.g., Wald, 1988) and even for expanded group
residential services including orphanages (e.g., Ladner, 1990; Levy, in
press; Wells, in press). If such services are predefined as representing
failure, there will be little we can do to rescue the young people
involved or to preserve our own professional self-respect. It should
also be acknowledged that our track record in providing creative,
effective, developmentally empowering work in the milieu has not been as
convincing as we might wish.
In this connection, it has been noted above that group care challenges some typical American ideological notions, but success is also an American value; to the extent that we can demonstrate effective work, the pragmatism that seems to be part of our national character can prevail to rekindle public interest and support. By revisiting the perspectives that were elaborated by Redl and his colleagues in an earlier decade, and in the context of more recent thinking about their programmatic implications (including the possibility of increased family involvement, e.g., Aldgate, 1987; Carman & Small, 1988), we can recapture our own excitement and, thus, reinvigorate our capacity to serve the developmental needs of troubled children and youth effectively.
JEROME BEKER
Beker, J. (1991). Back to the future: Effective residential group care and treatment for children and youth and the Fritz Redl legacy. iN Morse, W.C. (Ed.).Crisis Intervention in Residential Treatment: The Clinical Innovations of Fritz Redl. New York. Haworth Press. pp.57-58 and 68-69.
References
Aldgate, J. (1987). Residential care: A reevaluation of a threatened resource. Child and Youth Care Quarterly, 16, pp.48-59.
Bryce, M. E. (1988). Family-based services; Preventive intervention (pp. 177-203). In D. H. Olson (Ed.), Family-based perspectives in child and youth services. New York: The Haworth Press, Inc. (Also published as a special issue of Child & Youth Services, 11,1).
Carman, G. O., & Small, R. W. (Eds.). (1988). Permanence and family support: Changing practice in group child care. Washington, DC: Child Welfare League of America.
Children’s Defense Fund. (1990). A Children’s Investment Agenda for 1990. Washington, DC.:
Ladner, J. (1990). Bring back the orphanages. Family Therapy Networker, 14, 1, pp.48-49.
Levy, Z. (in press). Eagerly awaiting a home: A response from abroad. Child and Youth Care Quarterly.
Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families, U. S. House of Representatives. (1989). No place to call home: Discarded children in America. Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office. November.
Wells, K. (in press). Eagerly awaiting a home: Severely
emotionally disturbed youth, lost in our system of care -a personal
reflection. Child and Youth Care Quarterly.
