“Best Practices” has become almost a buzz word lately. The idea is very plausible, that is encourage youth programs to use those practices that have been shown through scientific research to be most effective. This popular concept is simple and straight forward – nothing but the best for our children – right?
At the same time our society is rapidly changing in many aspects. Students now in private emotional-growth, therapeutic parent-choice residential schools and programs often present significantly different problems then they did even just ten years ago. For example, computer game addiction, or computer addiction in general, is becoming quite common. Ten years ago it was uncommon.
Presented this way, the possible contradiction is obvious. How can you rely exculsively on “Best Practices” for problems that were almost unheard of a few years ago. Internet Addiction is a good example. It is true that treating Internet Addiction would be similar to treating Substance Abuse Addictions. However, reports are that putting an Internet Addict in with a group of Substance Abuse Addicts just doesn’t work despite the fact that they are all addicts. Despite the similarities in the addictions and thus treatment and healing, it is becoming apparent that Internet Addiction must be approached in a way unique to itself. Internet Addiction is a new enough phenomena that there are no “Best Practices” to rely on. The professional may be “informed” by Best Practices from Substance Abuse treatment, but to succeed they must innovate into new uncharted territory. There is no other way to keep up with the changes in society.
In my view, small owner-operated independent private programs are the laboratory of innovation. Not hampered by a multitude of state or corporation imposed guidelines, the operator is free to draw upon professional knowledge and mix this with his/her own creativity and experience. The results will speak for themselves whether the operator is on to something or not. As a result, some of these “experiments” will become the “Best Practices” of the future.
I see these innovations being created all the time in the schools and programs I work with, and also read of some in the news. Sometimes the innovations are just minor tweaks to a long established approach. Other times the concept is a radical diversion from common practice. In both cases some will succeed, and some will fail. The ultimate result is a treatment and healing network gradually adjusting to the changing needs of a changing society.
One response to a newly perceived need is an Associated Press story claiming the formation of the first “Internet addiction center opens in US“ I know of several other schools and programs that have developed special “support groups” for their students with this problem, so obiously there are innovative responses developing for this new problem.
Another innovation lately in the news was of AIM House in Colorado developing a partnership with a local business for some of their students to work in the business. It was explained that the program is using local work as part of therapy. Not only do the students learn a work ethic, but also how a business runs. Both of these are key to healing.
Another intriguing innovation is Greenbrier Academy in West Virginia. Their basic philosophy was developed with the help of a Bringham Young University professor, calling it “Strong Relationality.” This school’s program is based on some unique theortical assumptions about human nature and human relationships and this new school has developed a program based on these concepts. My visit report, which explains a little bit about “Strong Relationality” will appear on www.strugglingteens.com shortly. The school is now in their third year of operation, and the students seemed to be quite positive about their school and their experience there.
Regarding my original question, of Best Pracices vs Innovation, it is obvious that there always needs to be a balance, The successful school or program for struggling teens will stay current with the changing needs of their students through continual innovation, while staying grounded in what has been learned through what is called Best Practices. The good administrator is one that is skilled at maintaining this balance.
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I also went to a treatment program called Second Nature-Duchesne. It is a wilderness program in Utah, I was in the Unita mountains for 2 months, it was so helpful. People who say this stuff is illegal, take it from some one who was there from June 08′ to August 08′, it was the best thing that has ever happened, the most fun, relaxed, hard working time of my left growning up! Treatment programs and their practices are NOT ILLEGAL! I was in FOUR programs. Its the kids there that did illegal things. Programs are very helpful, so all of you that say this stuff is bad, yall are so naive. Do more reaserch on this stuff, you will actually see great things come out of treatment, but only if you want it to work. and i made it work!!
Okay, I went to a program called Island View RTC (Residental Treatment Center) in Syracuse, Utah, for adolecents. I was admitted when i was 16, Aug. 08′ and graduated the program Sept 09′, i was 18. For all you parents that have emotionally dyregulated teens, traumatized teens, due to rape, abuse, and molestation…ect. Teens that are drug addicts or can be diagnosed as a addict. Or have kids that are diagnosed as BPD, BP, Depression, Anxiety, whatever. Listen I was one of those girls at IV, which is co-ed btw, it helped alot, but some of the things that goes on at programs are out of your control. Like, how you kid acts, if they are PI-4ed (which is Personal Intervention where they tackle your kid if they are a sevre harm to themselves or others around them by acting out violently). Treatment Centers will only help your child is ready, your kid can take the skills that are taught there however they want to. Use it or push it away. I personally played the program, I did everything they wanted me to do, with little fuss. When I got out I was admitted to TWO more prgrams around the US, thats because I “played” the program, I faked it. Treatment Centers dont work for your child unless your child wants to work and change and make a difference in them sleves. All you need to do, is encourage your kid and dont judge them, and make them feel guilty, it will only make them have more grief and pain about how they acted/behaved at home. Keep this thought in mind parents, just because your kid doesnt say something, doesnt mean they dont feel a certain way. I can “look” happy, but feel really suicidel inside, thats just a example dont worry. This is a process that will take time. Maturing and growing-up, is not a done quicly, so dont force your kid to do everything you want, they are not 5 anymore, they are out of your control when they are 18, just like I am to my parents. And that scares them, eventhough now I use the skills and tools that I learned at Island View RTC, and put them into good use now. Have hope, and encourage your kids with positive things, and keep having good attitudes and positive consequnces for things they do right. Natural consequences will come with the more megative things your kid will do, and they will have to learn, thats all life is. NOTE: if any parents would like a good movie that really puts treatment in to more simpler words, watch the movie “Ordinary People”. It came out in the 80s.
Lon Woodbury – Heather is telling it like it is/was. Not “heresay” or “war stories” from others. With all due respect, when you say that you participated in “most of the above” it is obvious that you participated as a staff and not as a kid/forced participant.
I’m sure you can find ex-students that will give you your positive responses. I know many many many more that want nothing to do with surveys or even talking about their experiences in cedu and cedu like programs because they were so tramitized.
Finally, I find it upsetting and scary that anyone would be OK with sending the child to a program that would “experimenting” in hopes of becoming the “next best practice”. Great for the kids of the programs that work, not so great for the ones that the “experiment” did not work.
Lon,
You sound like a mad scientist, trying to justify radical experiments on homeless, disabled, or elderly people. You are not messing with some lab rat, these are living, breathing people.
The post-traumatic stress, of which I have been clinically diagnosed, did not come from my time in the military. It did not come from living in a war zone for a year.
It came from a facility, like yours.
It came from administrators, like you.
It came from staff, like the ones you employ.
It would be safer to send children into Baghdad than send them to a residential treatment center.
Yes Lon.. I attended CEDU.. I did the entire program from start to finish.
ALL of the things mentioned above were a part of the program. 21 days were not experienced by everyone because you had to get in a lot of trouble to be put on one (IE refusing the program for an extended period was a good enough reason). Many of my peers were sent on 21 days.
I am a graduate and none of this his “hearsay”
The consensus with graduates of my time is the program was illegal, abusive and unethical (mostly negative)
You can’t discount real experience. You participating in a “workshop” here and there is not the same as attending CEDU as a student year round, everyday for 30 months.
I’m glad some people had a good experience.. I would never wish upon someone the nightmarish emotions that me and many of my friends must endure due to CEDU. But I highly doubt this opinion is a majority.
Of course it is not simple and I never stated it was simple. It is in fact very complicated and very emotional and that’s why I like to look at it from a legal and ethical standpoint.
-Keeping minors up for 24 hours at a time with little clothing and food with extreme variable temperatures is not legal
-Leaving a minor in the desert alone for 4 days with little food and no shelter is not legal
-Giving valid high school credits for chopping wood with a cross cut saw and sledge and wedge for 30 hours a week is unethical
-Physically injuring a student and not letting them see a doctor nor tell their parents for months on end is not legal!
-Stripping a child of their right to smile, laugh, sing, be touched is unethical
The list goes on and on. Although this “great” experiment may have helped a small minority.. it has hurt a great majority. Innovation, with it’s positive connotation, is noway to speak of with behavioral modification techniques on children especially when their parents are paying a lot of money for it.
The program is flawed and very expensive.
But I ask you Lon, you seem to be the expert here.. Have you experienced a propheet? a rap? work assignments? a workshop? work crews? a wilderness trip? a solo? a table? a fulltime? a 21 day? dinner dishes? lugs?
I ask.. who is the real expert here. Who really know what effect a program has on it students?
The students.
If you want data.. interview ALL students over ALL time periods. I think you’ll be surprised at the outcome.
So far as experiences, yes I participated in most of the above, but some I never saw or heard happen at this school system (heard some from some rogue programs though). So far as interview all students, I have received surveys from a period of over many years with responses from very positive to very negative (with an emphasis on the positive) including some ex-students who have kept in touch with me, and: did you experience all of those bad experiences yourself, or are you just passing on heresay/war stories from others?
I’m sorry Lon.. I am an ex-student and so are most of my best friends and we all agree about the illegality of the program.
Reunions have nothing to do with the program… we have them all the time because the friendships made under such distress will be some of the tightest friendships ever created. Those people are my family.. they went through 30 months of insanity with me.. and they will be a subset of my friend pool forever.. a subset that can understand me better than anyone.
You are welcome to your opinion. From my side, I hear from ex-students and ex-parents all the time and the reaction ranges from positive to negative The picture is not as clear and simple as you seem to state.
Main Entry: in·no·va·tion
Pronunciation: \?i-n?-?v?-sh?n\
Function: noun
Date: 15th century
1 : the introduction of something new
2 : a new idea, method, or device : novelty
CEDU definitely used “innovative” approaches but that does not mean that they were successful nor does it imply that they were legal. Daily humiliation for 30 months helps a struggling child how?
That doesn’t seem to be what the ex-students are saying on the facebook page planning the Rocky Mountain Academy reunion: and it doesn’t sound like that from parents mostly distressed by CEDU’s closing . -Lon
One of those “rogue” programs, you refer people to on a regular basis. It IS a private program where there is a two decade old history of abuse. FFS.
Huh? Is there a fact here?
Internet Addiction? Seriously? … ok lets back up a few …
15 years ago – in the budding internet – I was one of those that could have been considered “an internet addict” – did this ruin my life?
No.
It actually gave me the basis for something that has now become the livelihood of my family.
Let me explain – I spent countless hours on MUDs (like today’s MMORPG’s but text based), IRC (internet relay chat – essentially chat rooms), and the WWW. I was fascinated with the whole new world opening up. (It might also be said that I had just gotten out of one of those “treatment facilities”, for a so-called “sex addiction” – even though there was no addiction, and it was actually a matter of personal identity – I was a lesbian – and I have Asperger’s Syndrome – which, given its ability to become compulsive and obsessive, looked very much like “addiction”, when I got into something).
I spent time at home – not working – on the computer, constantly – my parents (I was almost 20 at the time), were worried, always yelling at me to go get a job, and to get out of the house and do something social. Seriously – my life – nothing but ‘net.
Flash forward 15 years later – I have an Emmy award for technical work with a team for Interactive Television, I work in the computer industry as a Systems Administrator/Network Engineer.
Essentially my “addiction” got to the point where I had to know everything about the internet and computers, I started playing with UNIX – which made all these things I was into (MUDs, IRC, and WWW) much easier, and definitely made my experience complex and enriching.
When I finally needed to get a job, I finally had marketable skills – at first in tech support, next in networking. I was “obsessed” with networking and computers for a good part of the next 8 years from that point.
And then came my son – and now – I’m “addicted” to being a Mom.
I understand the paradigm for everyone to think of things they don’t understand as “addiction” – but seriously – in things that can turn to marketable skills (and yes, I even think surfing porn can be turned into a marketable skill, or it may just be I know more about the internet and technology than the average bear… I have a friend who mkes a nice living doing bizarre porn websites – I’m pretty sure that was an obsession/”addiction” for him at one point.) is there really such thing as an “addiction”? Or is it just obsession than can be harnessed and turned into something life-giving and affirming, and positive?
Sometimes it really amazes me how clueless some people really are – makes me want to hit them with a Clue by Four – ala the BOFH (another fun thing arising out of my internet “addiction” – look it up sometime).
I am also curious about what programs anyone knows who have developed “innovative” programs. If we leave out the CEDU school, wilderness programs, equine therapy and Greenbrier which all clearly had in their origins, innovative appraoches?
I don’t see many good programs conducting experiments, rather I see programs that have as a base, sound principles and practices that build upon what we do know. Those programs that succeed and are well known, have a solid theoretical base and are able to verbalize why they do what they do, and have a clear system of being able to build off of what is known to be effective. For example, Island View was developed around solid, up to date practices. What Island View developed and referred to as “Five Food Groups” is a good example of a well thought out model of treatment. They developed the Five Food groups, which covered milieu, education, activities/recreation, psychiatry, and therapy. The five food groups were a creative way to blend into the program, food groups which had the built in best practices in a creative way. They did not experiment, but addresssed the needs of youth in a creative way. In Island View’s case, all five food groups brought together known practices, heavy on all five food groups with a bit more on the therapy, milieu, and education, but did not eliminate the best practives in psychiatry and activites/recreation. The emotional growth schools were weighted heavily toward the milieu as opposed to the other components. In both examples, the treatment was based on the youth’s needs.
I think the best direction is to eliminate the term “experiment”. That term conjurs up all sorts of weird interpretations. Island View, perhaps the most successful RTC. in our industry did not “experiment”, but used sound practices in a creative way.
Innovation and creativity are certainly part of the human capacity to create change in different environments (natural, physical, economic, social, and personal). It is not, however, wise or therapeutic to introduce untested, arbitrary, “unique” practices that have only idiosyncratically formed theoretical foundations into the “treatment” of struggling teens.
Flexibility in the application of best and sound practices (which already offer some divergence and release from strictly evidence-based practices) may be helpful in meeting the particular needs of a particular child, but when resistance to or the sluffing off of the value of empirical testing and validation appear as part of an argument to justify new approaches to already only marginally effective practices many red flags go up.
Innovation and insight may be wonderful things, but let’s be clear that they should be done openly, with full disclosure and transparency to anyone wanting to learn about them. They ought to be subject to rigorous scrutiny, and anyone being used as a guinea pig for such “innovations” – which means any and all youth – must have the explicit right to “opt-out” of the experiment, have access to advocates, and have the ability to report abuse.
And that is only if we take a “best case” approach to innovation. More realistically, this sounds like a couched defense of tactics designed to break kids of their proper job of being kids, and to exercise unnecessary, ineffective power of vulnerable people just because you can. Such motivations are not clincially or therapeutically indicated.
Thanks Kendall. There’s no intention of bypassing existing research, nor advocating “untested” methods. However, I’ll circulate your comments to some professionals more qualified than myself to specifically respond to your concerns. -Lon
Child abuse, which occurs regularly in residential treatment facilities, is not “innovation.” The fundamentals of twentieth century trauma research are as applicable to today’s youth as they ever have been.
Of course child abuse is not innovation. In institutions, it more often happens when parents and independent professionals are not allowed to be involved nor be involved in decision making. This describes many public institutions and those rogue private programs that states have been unable to do their job on.
We desperately need to develop better and humane ways of helping these struggling teens, and that kind of innovation comes mostly from the private sector. -Lon
What then of those “experiments” that fail? These are lives we are talking about not simply fodder for more tests.
Reasonable question, but that is comparing the private sector schools and programs to a perfect world. Even with all the incidents in rogue programs that the states and concerned professionals in the field have been unable to fully rein in, the total record in the private sector still looks better than the horrendous record of public institutions of “business as usual” funded by tax dollars. See a partial list of Public Youth Institution Failures.
For example, almost all Boot Camps are funded by the public as an “innovation” to handle “troubled teens” that get in trouble with the law. Most research shows they are ineffective and even dangerous, yet are still being funded. -Lon
If we waited for research to support all of our practices we would probably still be in the stone age! Right on for creativity and innovation!
It’s certainly an art to tease out and recognize the seemingly “different” or “odd” new thing that is emerging in the trenches and to recognize the value before cutting it off. It takes a climate where staff feels supported when they experiment, so that they can learn to trust their intuition. One of the most important acts of an administrator in my mind is to disseminate the discoveries within one’s program and help them to spread throughout the staff. It’s also important to recognize those practices that can be spread, taking into account that some approaches are truly unique relying on the specific talents of the innovator. These will not translate across the boards.
Good point! When something becomes “institutionalized,” then anything “odd” or “different” will be screened out, whether it be better or worse. -Lon
Well said! Creativity often is stifled by bureaucracy, which can often occur when standards are enforced.
Yet, it is important to also learn from experience, and use it to guide one’s future activities, which is how standards and best practices are developed. The most important thing when creating standards is to ask the right questions. That is, what actually caused the desired change?
Yes, we need to allow small programs the flexibility to be creative so that they can develop innovative strategies for helping their clients learn how to navigate an increasingly chaotic world. The only standards of practice that should be non-negotiable are those that need to be enforced for a client’s safety. Indeed, a good administrator is best equipped to make that judgment call.
Ah, I have my career status as a federal civil servant (I was a bureaucrat for Uncle Sam!) and learned well how proposals are forced into conformity.) -Lon