Explaining our Decision to Invite CAFETY Representatives to NC
by Mark Sklarow, Executive Director, IECA
It has been many months since we first announced that we had invited members of CAFETY (Community Alliance for the Ethical Treatment of Youth) to share the stage at our Charlotte Conference with leaders of the therapeutic community and educational consultants, for a session that will explore all sides of the current debate in Washington DC to regulate therapeutic schools and programs. Now, as the conference gets closer and since my blog of October 12, we have heard from a number of colleagues expressing great concern over the direction of the session, and some even questioning why we would invite a group that is clearly hostile to the view held by most of the conference attendees.
I think everyone and every issue are best served when people have the opportunity to hear diverse viewpoints. As a debate rages on Capitol Hill regarding how far to go in regulating therapeutic schools and programs, we have an obligation to hear as many viewpoints as possible. From my days teaching political science in Philadelphia, I developed a strong belief that nothing is gained when we refuse to listen to those who disagree with us. By allowing those with divergent views—even oppositional views—to share a stage, we may even discover some common ground.
To be sure, I cringe at some of the shrillest voices and unfounded complaints that some have claimed on Web sites about mistreatment at the hands of programs. So, too, I cringe at some of the revelations that have come out regarding the least regulated or poorly run programs—resulting (rightfully so) in some of them discredited or shuttered. Most voices today believe that some regulation is necessary either on a state or national basis; the question is the degree. It is this question—one of policy alternatives—that I hope will be the focus of the session in Charlotte.
Many months ago I met with CAFETY President Brian Lombrowski. He was passionate about his belief in youth rights and reasonable in understanding IECA’s role. We talked about American Psychiatric Association guidelines, least restrictive environments, and local alternatives. Interestingly, since that meeting, new home-based and community-based alternatives have been increasingly explored in the milieu of choices open to educational consultants. As consultants know, community-based alternatives have been tried, unsuccessfully, prior to most residential placements. I told Brian at our meeting that a recitation of horror stories would be misplaced at an IECA gathering: we all know about the best and the worst of therapeutic placements.
Given these reasons and expectations, IECA has planned a session that will allow consultants, school and program representatives, CAFETY members, and a university professor to explore the proposals for government regulation. It’s my sincere hope that we all walk away from the session having learned a little, and understand a lot more than we did before the hour began.
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As a casualty of the recession, I will not be at the conference, but I think this is a very important session. I am hoping that it will be recorded in some way that I can eventually see it and hear it.
We can better fight the worst of the attack on us if we understand what it is about. But perhaps it is more important to be aware that many of the people who believe what we do violates rights of kids are people who are sincerely motivated by what they believe are the best interest of kids. I have personally kept a dialog going with people who have that mindset going back to my days with BRIDGE TO UNDERSTANDING. Just last evening I was attempting to recruit such a person to write for my current website http://www.familylight.com/link3/index.htm . If we can maintain the common ground with the best of these people by doing everything we do in the best interest of children, the best of these poeple will be our allies when the going gets rough. But first we need open channels of communication. This program will be an excellent start.
Tom Croke
I support Mark’s position. Except in the most unusual circumstances, I think we learn from having dialogue with others, including those with whom we disagree. I would like to learn more about CAFETY’s position and, more important, the reasoning and data behind their position. I will then use this information to make myself a better educational consultant.
Mark, I could not agree more with your points about CAFETY. Nothing/no one is served by shutting doors to dialogue about a subject that concerns us all – the safety of kids in programs. Having this conversation on our turf is a strong statement on our part about our confidence in ourselves, our investment in quality programming for kids, and our willingness to learn. Regulation will happen one way or the other, and IECA’s voice needs to be heard in the process.
Inviting CAFETY is not an endorsement of their position. Deliberately excluding them would feel like reactive defensiveness, unworthy of us as professionals.
Echoing Mark’s comments, we have no intention of reciting horror stories, our goal during our breakout session is to simply provide educational consultants information about intensive alternatives to residential placements that may be unfamiliar to them since they are largely available in the public mental health system, and how in their role they can operationalize that approach to ensure that young people are afforded every opportunity to succeed in their community (including in some cases a community-based out-of-home placement) before utilizing residential programs located outside of a young person’s community.
Besides my role in CAFETY I have experience as a care coordinator who occasionally worked with an educational consultant to help identify services to keep youth in their communities. I also currently work for the New York State Office of Mental Health as a Youth Involvement Specialist where as part of my role I train residential providers on how they can move from control-based systems to collaborative treatment approaches.
CAFETY’s mission is to promote, secure, and protect the human rights of youth who are confined in residential programs or who are at risk of being confined in such programs. CAFETY’s mission is not to shut residential programs down.
As evidenced by CAFETY’s engagement of residential providers at the AACRC conference in Cleveland just a few weeks ago, we want to be a constructive force in helping to shape policy and practice to ensure the best outcomes for young people. Sometimes that means challenging residential providers to make difficult changes, but it’s never done out of vengeance, it’s done only out of concern of the young people in their care based on the understanding of our own personal experience.
For more information about how families, youth, government agencies and residential providers can work together to improve outcomes for young people please see the Building Bridges Joint Resolution, for which CAFETY is a signatory to at http://www.alliance1.org/Public_Policy/welfare/Building_Bridges.pdf
Finally, we know of residential providers who have changed with the times to provide more services in the communities of the young people they work with. Some of these providers used to only operate stand alone residential treatment campuses.
We look forward to the opportunity to share our views and the research base behind them.