Residential Group Care Research Articles

Empowering youth at risk through community service

Youth who are at-risk for social deviance and failure, whether they are in the community or in residential group care settings, are often viewed as liabilities rather than as potential assets. In response to this dynamic, two community service projects, Carry-Out-Caravan II and the Illinois Youth on Campus Service Learning Project, were developed and implemented to foster personal and social growth in atrisk youth. The purpose of these projects was to use a service-learning approach to facilitate the transition of at-risk adolescents into responsible social roles. On the basis of the guidelines for initiating service-learning experiences provided by Giles, Porter-Honnet, and Micgliore (1991), junior and senior high school youth provided grocery shopping and delivery, house and garage painting, yard and garden maintenance, and social and recreation program services to older persons.

Residential Education in the Unites States

The authors explore some of the crucial issues on which the future success of residential group care programs for children and youth in the United States depends, including funding, legal considerations, race and culture, the role of religion, and evaluation.

Parent education and training or family therapy: Does it matter which comes first?

This paper raises questions about the appropriate focus for residential group care programs as they work with parents (including single parents) of children in care. Many programs, in their efforts to claim status as treatment centers, have broadened their range of services and now include therapeutic services for parents, in particular family therapy. However, there has not been a serious examination of whether therapeutic approaches to work with families fit the group care service context. This paper will address concerns about using family therapy in group care programs and will suggest that parent education and training is a more effective alternative.

Can Environments Modify and Enhance the Development of Personality and Behavior?

The general stability of individual personality and behavior patterns may result not only from inherited factors and previous experience, but also from the tendency for most of us to live in social environments that remain relatively similar over time. Efforts to induce change require, therefore, that new kinds of environments be provided that are designed to elicit desired changes rather than reproducing familiar experiences. Residential group care has the potential to provide such an influence, but it frequently tends instead (often under pressure from the residents toward familiarity and stability) to reproduce key features of their previous environments. The effective Modifying Environment uses the potential of planned, unfamiliar experiences to produce change, rather than succumbing to the numbing effect of familiar ones that reinforce established pattems that may be adaptive in one's immediate situation but deleterious in a broader sense.Sea

An alternative approach to classifying and measuring residential education and group care and treatment programs: Internal totality and community orientation as separate components

Internal totality and community orientation are two pivotal components, difficult to measure, in the literature on residential education (including both residential schools for the elite and group or congregate care and education programs for marginal youth). We propose a two-dimensional model based on historical research and contemporary study to define and differentiate these concepts. Internal totality can be measured through the links and balance between the formal curriculum, extra curriculum, and out of school (nonformal) activities; community orientation through links between the residential and ideological community, the local community, and the wider community. Implications for practice, policy, and further research are suggested.

Orphancare to Permanency Planning-Two Centuries of Residential Group Care

The development of residential care for children in North and South Carolina has been somewhat different from the country as a whole. Carolina agencies usually have chosen not to adopt residential treatment models of service; instead, they have offered generalized child care with an emphasis on using group care as a family service. The result has been an array of intentionalized services and concepts that can be used by a variety of programs including residential treatment centers. Residential care has been shaped by historical trends and public policies; the resulting historical developments are divided into five phases. It is believed that Phase V, Maturing of Ecological Concepts holds promise for more appropriate uses of residential services.

Critical issues for practice in residential treatment: The view from within.

A large proportion of children in residential treatment engage in extreme acting-out behavior and suffer from severe attachment disorders and abuse reactivity. At the same time, practice is increasingly alienated from theory and public policy. The challenges to practitioners posed by these difficulties are described and illustrated by vignettes, their impact on residential group care practice is discussed, and their implications for the redesign of practice and for the development of a new theoretical base are examined.

Powerful pioneers in residential group care: A look at our roots and heritage

The roots of residential child and youth care are explored in this wide-ranging historical overview. The elements of relationship, competence, and service provide a framework for interweaving the words and ideas of numerous European and North American pioneers who have influenced developments and thinking in this field.

3: Residential Group Care as a Socializing Environment

Residential group care has often been viewed as antithetical to healthy normalizing development processes for troubled or "at-risk" children and youth, yet it appears in other settings to be the method of choice for leadership preparation for the elite. This chapter examines group care generically and attempts to bring implications from programs in the latter category to bear on those in the former.

Grants and Outcomes

Grants and Outcomes

Erratum: Residential Group Care for Children Considered Emotionally Disturbed, 1966-1981

Previous articleNext article No AccessErratum: Residential Group Care for Children Considered Emotionally Disturbed, 1966-1981PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Social Service Review Volume 62, Number 2Jun., 1988 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/644541 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright 1988 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Residential Group Care for Children Considered Emotionally Disturbed, 1966-1981

Trends in the organized provision of residential group care for children considered emotionally disturbed are identified in data collected by two national surveys carried out 15 years apart, in 1966 and in 1981. Major findings include a marked increase in the use of this form of care and a shift toward the use of smaller facilities for briefer periods of time. Competing alternative explanations for these and for other changes over time, observed in the data, are considered and implications for the future are discussed.

Residential care: A reevaluation of a threatened resource

Within the framework of permanency planning there are two main categories of residential care for children: residential group care for treatment purposes and residential group care as an alternative to foster family care. Based on a study conducted in Scotland, this paper argues that, for some children, residential care may play an important role in encouraging parental access and reunification with children. It may also have a more controversial place for a minority of older children in providing a permanent alternative placement to foster family care that promotes continuing links with families of origin.

The two-fold care organization: On the combining of group and foster care

In this paper the theoretical grounds and the daily organizational practices of the foster home group care (FHGC) experiment are described and evaluated. The FHGC experiment combines residential care and foster care into one program for high-risk children. This is done in an attempt to utilize the built-in organizational advantages and to neutralize the built-in organizational disadvantages of each of the two strategies. The children in care constantly move between foster homes and a group care center, all located within one small agricultural community in Israel. Ethnographic descriptions—based on observations of and interviews with professional caregivers and foster parents—show that while the foster home provides regular links with a normal community, the group care center provides a continuous experience of belonging. Thus, the foster home reduces the impact of closedness and totality characteristic of regular residential group care programs, while the group care program reduces feelings of incomplete belonging experienced in the foster home.

Residential Group Care in Community Context:

Residential Group Care in Community Context:

Teaching Competence in Residential Group Care

residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed preadolescents hosted an evaluation of cognitive and behavioral social competence training. Participants were 45 young men of 51 enrolled at the center. Post-test measurement showed boys in the problem solving and interpersonal skill training conditions had better conceptual abilities and overt comportment than boys in the problem solving only or discussion and test only conditions. No significant differences were found on locus of control scores or on ratings of videotaped performance tests. Study findings have implications for future research and treatment with emotionally disturbed youth.

THE SPACE WE CREATE CONTROLS US

“We shape our buildings-and they shape us,” a comment attributed to Winston Churchill, is applied to spatial arrangements of residential group care settings. The importance of private space is reviewed in terms of individuals' power, position and sense of identity with suggestions as to what can be done to apply such knowledge. Public space, in turn, is studied for its purpose in bringing together residents, staff, and relevant contacts. Concrete examples are presented throughout the article illustrating the notion: CHANGE SPACE- AND ADVANCE PROGRAM.