Pros And Cons Of Therapeutic Boarding Schools

One of the many ways our society deals with delinquent youth, is sending a child away to a therapeutic boarding school. This is usually the case when the parents feel their child has serious behavior issues and strong habits of chemical substance abuse. Since the 1990's, in the United States, hundreds of these schools have been installed through both public and private agencies. There are absolutely no federal laws the regulate and oversee these schools. For this and many other reasons, there is a lot of speculation over these schools and whether or not they are actually helpful as a type of pure diversion program. Personally, I have an extremely close relationship with this topic and have found it very enlightening to engage myself in learning

These school's portray themselves in a positive and glorifying way, intending for you to want to send your kid there. The GAO took on the role of legitimate parents with troubled teenagers and researched such programs through internet searches and magazine advertisements (Kutz, 2008). Such boarding schools, attempt to reach out to parents, by including several scenic and breath taking pictures of where their child will be living. Despite this there are many schools that include fences and other security measures to ensure that youth do not leave without permission (Kutz, 2008). Numerous accounts of false statements and misleading representations relating to a range of issues including education and admissions, as well as undisclosed conflicts of interest were found in this investigative report (Kutz, 2008). In one specific case, when in telephone contact with a Montana boarding school, the GAO posed as fictitious parents and were told their child could not be admitted to this school before filling out an application. This request was strangely disregarded by the school and shortly later received an acceptance letter saying their cild could attend the school. The GAO came across incidents like this in at least half there researched cases, implying a lot of these schools are using inappropriate means to run their

As mentioned earlier, the GAO investigated cases of abuse and death, that were usually do to the cause of maltreatment among staff. A lot of hired “professionals” in this industry are untrained, poorly goal oriented and don't know how to deal with this juveniles (Kutz, 2008). In these investigated reports, it was discovered kids with health problems were denied treatment and continually physically and emotionally abused by staff member, instead of being given special treatment. With a lot of these schools interests revolving around “changing” these kids, staff members take this power upon themselves and treat these kids how ever they see feel fit. Lacking federal law, encourages this continued inappropriate behavior treatment of kids by staff members and this must be looked at with more speculation and