and reach thousands of daily visitors
20 June 2008
NO 1311
Group care
What do the following services have in common?
Group home for adolescent status offenders
Residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed children
State training school for adolescent delinquents
Shelter care facility for "street kids"
Respite care facility for developmentally disabled adolescents
Group residence for dependent/neglected children
Differences aside, all of these services fall under the general heading of group child care. In point of fact, whatever our specific image of a child care institution, the group care segment of the service continuum is composed of a number of types of service, each sharing the common element of caring for special-needs children on a 24-hour-a-day basis. In fact, national standard-setting associations recognize several different types of group care settings for children who are dependent and/or have behavioral/emotional difficulties: residential treatment centers, group homes, crisis and shelter care facilities, children's psychiatric facilities, and respite care facilities (Child Welfare League of America 1984). In many states and jurisdictions, important group care services for children and youth are provided under mental health, juvenile correction, child welfare, and developmental disabilities auspices.
The recent national census of group care conducted by Pappenfort and his colleagues identified group care services for children in several different streams of care, including child welfare, mental health, and juvenile justice. Within these service streams, the investigators identified nine different types of facilities: dependent and neglected, pregnant adolescents, temporary shelter, delinquent, status offenders, detention, substance abuse, emotionally disturbed, and psychiatric (Pappenfort et al. 1983). Accordingly, there is considerable overlap between group care services provided in different streams of care, as well as a lack of precision in various definitions of group care. Notice, for example, the similarities in the following definitions offered by the Child Welfare League of America (1984) for residential treatment and group home service:
Residential treatment
To provide treatment in a group care therapeutic environment that
integrates daily group living, remedial education and treatment services
on the basis of an individualized plan for each child, exclusively for
children with severe emotional disturbances, whose parents cannot cope
with them and who cannot be effectively treated in their own homes, in
another family, or in other less intensive treatment-oriented child care
facilities.
Group home service
To provide care and treatment in an agency-owned or operated facility
that assures continuity of care and opportunity for community
experiences, in combination with a planned group living program and
specialized services, for small groups of children and youth who are
unable to live in their own homes for any reason and who, because of
their age, problems, or stage of treatment, can benefit by such a
program (pp. xxiii-xxiv).
The implied progression is of serving the most severely disturbed child in more sophisticated and restricted residential treatment centers. Yet this is not always the case. Severely disturbed children are being treated in less restrictive, more family-oriented settings (Cherry 1976; Dimock 1977; Rubenstein et al. 1978).
Recent developments in the use of specialized, treatment-oriented foster care, for example, suggest that children who once might have required residential treatment may now be served in small, community-centered, family-based units with specialized treatment services (Hawkins and Breiling, in press). These practice experiments raise exciting possibilities for the child welfare field: namely, can foster familybased treatment achieve similar or superior results on a range of criterion measures including youth outcomes, consumer evaluations, treatment costs, factors related to normalization, and others, when compared to intensive residential treatment? With specific reference to the central topic of this volume, can such services provide a needed link in the chain of preventive services designed to forestall permanent disruption for families with children in need of intensive treatment services with families who are, nonetheless, committed to see their children return home? Finally, Maluccio and Marlow's (1972) observation, over a decade ago, regarding the placement process in institutional care is still largely correct:
The decision to place a child in residential treatment is presently a highly individualized matter based on a complex set of idiosyncratic factors defying categorization. The literature does not indicate agreement on consistent criteria or universal guidelines and it is not certain whether institutions diverse in origin, philosophy, policy, and clientele can agree on a basic set of premises (p. 239).
JAMES K. WHITTAKER
Whittaker, James K. (1988). Family support and group
child care: Rethinking resources. In Carman, G.O. and Small, R.W.
(Eds.). Permanence and Family Support: Changing Practice in Group
Child Care. Washington, D.C. Child Welfare League of America. pp.
32-34.
REFERENCES
Cherry, T. (1976). The Oregon child study and treatment centers. Child Care Quarterly, 5, 2. pp. 146-155.
Dimock, E.T. (1977). Youth crisis services: Short-term community-based residential treatment. Child Welfare, 6, 3.pp. 187-196.
Hawkins, R. and Breiling, J. (Eds.). (in press). Foster Family Based Treatment and Special Foster Care. Washington, D.C. Child Welfare League of America.
Maluccio, A.N. and Marlow, W.D. (1972). Residential treatment of emotionally disturbed childen: A review of the literature. Social Service Review, 46, 2. pp.230-251.
Pappenfort, D.M.; Young, T.M. and Marlow, C.R. (1983). Residential Group Care: 1981: 1966 and Preliminary Report of Selected Findings from the National Survey of Residential Group Care Facilities. Chicago. The University of Chicago, School of Social Services Administration.
Rubenstein, J.S. et al. (1978). The parent therapist
program: Alternative for emotionally disturbed children. American
Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 48, 4. pp 654-662.
