Adolescant Care: a Landscape of Change
utilizing a fixed length of stay of twelve to eighteen months these programs provide a cost effective way to help. These schools are evolving to meet the needs of increasingly involved and informed families. One such school is pioneering an Internet based family support group where one can receive understanding support and direction from other parents experiencing the same difficulties.
Therapeutic Boarding Schools
In some ways, all of the schools and programs mentioned in this article are therapeutic boarding schools. For our purposes, we will focus upon schools whose emphasis is more on academics, but who serve young people who require significant emotional and behavioral support. Many students in these settings have benefited from prior placement in outdoor, residential, or emotional growth programming, but may be at risk if they were to return home due to the “toxic” nature of the community or their need to further internalize change. Therapeutic Boarding Schools often combine elements of formal school settings to aid acceptance into private schools and colleges. Many students need review of earlier schoolwork to fill gaps in their learning while others have not filled the promise of their academic and leadership gifts. These programs are usually very open to the community in terms of service and learning. Several incorporate parent education and ongoing family therapy to augment other therapy or individual counseling. For some, therapy is on an “as needed” basis. Although these schools are more relaxed than RTC’s or other programs, there is still a strong emphasis on the maintenance of a safe environment. These programs cannot tolerate what may occur on a regular public or private school campus in terms of illicit substances, emotional abuse, negative subculture images, etc. Many of these schools are now having impressive success in college placements. These schools are increasingly able to minimize the relapses so often experienced when a young person returns home directly from more structured and restrictive levels of care.
Young Adult Transition or Independent Living Programs
Some young adults are ill prepared for college, career, and independent living. Those who struggled as adolescents can be overwhelmed by the freedoms and responsibility they yearned for just months or years before. Programming in which focused, highly structured initial phases of services are gradually relaxed culminating in private apartment living replete with laundry, cooking, jobs, college or trade school within a local community can actually enhance transition into young adulthood. From clients with some form of functional deficit to those who have been over-indulged or classic under-achievers these programs can be highly effective. Coupled with substance abuse groups, optional (or mandatory) psychotherapy, career counseling, internships, remedial education courses and other supports these programs have grown in numbers and variety.
Hybrids
In visiting over one hundred and fifty schools and programs over the past ten years, I note an amazing transformation of programming in most settings. The best of individual psychotherapy techniques is now combined in wilderness settings while residential programs increasingly take advantage of the outdoors to effect change. There are programs that utilize the wilderness for three days each week, after which formal school and psychotherapy is offered. It seems that there is more openness to finding what works, and using it, as opposed to believing that one has the corner on the market. Look for more such transformations to come in the next wave of change.
Nationalized Networking
Often local resources can be limited. The belief of the adage, “least restrictive, closest to home” in terms of placement may not always hold true. If one can find more effective, less costly services on the other side of the country should those services be immediately dismissed? I have found several programs that provide regional support services while carefully re-integrating a youngster back into the community in ways that are superior to many local services. On the other hand it is imperative that networking between local outpatient services and schools and programs serving a national clientele be solid. Much is lost when transitions are not done in a thoughtful way. One group of professionals is particularly effective in helping this to happen. Educational Consultants who specialize in assessing and then matching a challenged youngster with appropriate services nationwide, and then help with transition home are available throughout the country. Most devote twenty to thirty percent of their time each year to visit schools and programs to determine how best their clients can be served. Their experience allows families to sort