Residential Treatment Center - Controversy

Controversy

Disability rights organizations, such as the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, oppose placement in RTC programs, calling into question the appropriateness and efficacy of such placements, noting the failure of such programs to address problems in the child’s home and community environment, and calling attention to the limited mental-health services offered and substandard educational programs. Concerns specifically related to a specific type of residential treatment center called therapeutic boarding schools include:

• inappropriate discipline techniques,
• medical neglect,
• restricted communication such as lack access to child protection and advocacy hotlines, and
• lack of monitoring and regulation.

Bazelon promotes community-based services on the basis that they are more effective and less costly than residential placement.

From late 2007 through 2008, a broad coalition of grass-roots efforts, as well as prominent medical and psychological organizations such as the Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic and Appropriate use of Residential Treatment (ASTART) and the Community Alliance for the Ethical Treatment of Youth (CAFETY), provided testimony and support that led to the creation of the Stop Child Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens Act of 2008 by the United States Congress Committee on Education and Labor.

Jon Martin-Crawford and Kathryn Whitehead of CAFETY testified at a hearing of the United States Congressional Committee on Education and Labor on April 24, 2008, and described abusive practices they had experienced at the Family Foundation School and Mission Mountain School, both therapeutic boarding schools.

Due to the absence of regulation of these programs by the federal government and because many are not subject to state licensing or monitoring, the Federal Trade Commission has issued a guide for parents considering such placement.