I visited 3 wonderful locations who were vocational. At first I explain there methods and later on some comparing.
Orangewood
Orangewood Children and Family Center (OCFC) is a 24-hour emergency shelter care facility operated and owned by the County of Orange Social Services Agency (The System), for children who have been abused, abandoned and/or neglected; and is licensed as a group home.
We get a tour around the property. Orangewood has got 6 cottages (young children, boys, girls, male adolescents, female adolescents and a 23-hour group).
The goal of Orangewood is to place the children/adolescents as soon as possible in a healthy environment (family, foster families, other parent, group home or in the worst case Juvenile).
The 23-hour group is interesting. After a 23-hour stay of the child, the county considers a placement. Everything below 23-hours stay it is not an official placement and is temporarily stay. Orangewood is a shelter and not a cure centre so when they place a child within 23 hours in a family it is more helpful for the child and Orangewood did a good job.
Unfortunately that is not always the reality. For the other children and adolescents are the cottages where they can stay for 30 days, with a max of 90 days up to a year. Because I work with the adolescents I talk about them in my report.
In these cottages live maximal 8 adolescents (male and female separate). There has to be 1 group counselor on every 4 adolescents.
A group counselor does not need a master or bachelor degree, they need experience, a young development of the child training and several other raining the organization requires them to do.
Besides the fact that there are professionals from the health care agency (psychiatrist, social workers, nurses) they are not a ‘cure’ centre and can’t provide the adolescents official treatment, they don’t have the license for it, because they are a shelter.
In reality the most adolescents can’t be placed immediately in foster care or family and some of them live in orangewood for up to a year, its Orangewood or the streets. Because orangewood realizes that a lot of adolescents need some sort of treatment they give them group counseling sessions such as STOP GAP, ALATEEN, peer group counseling, and independent live skills. I have asked him about EQUIP (they are not familiar with EQUIP (peer group training/therapy we use in our unit).
The use the ‘niveaukaarten’ we use. Adolescents can deserve points by learning skills, work on there goal so they earn privileges (later bedtime, game time, more allowance). The competency method is a well used method in the USA
Parents are welcome in orangewood, they have to make a appointment and court have to approve that they are here.
Every child/adolescent is here on court order, no volunteer base (county funded you don’t have to be insured).
Canyon Acres
Canyon Acres is a beautiful health care clinic. They provide day treatment for children in the age of 6-12. They used to be a residential care (inpatient) and since a few year a day treatment centre (outpatient). They switched because they think it is better to help a child from his own environment and not to remove the child from his environment.
Later on I discovered that this was true but there was another element for the switch. This was also a political decision, the county refused to acknowledge that in there county this target group was reality. The children who used to lived in Canyon Acres were not replaced with there family (there problems and mental disorders where to heavy that was not possible), so they were placed in group homes within The USA.
The day treatment takes cash pay, private insurance and medi-cal (heavy criteria state insurance).
Most of the parents can’t afford this kind of treatment.
For those who can Canyon Acres offers therapeutic services in a beautiful Anaheim Hills campus and conveniently located Office in orange.
They provide drama therapy, horse therapy (take care of a horse, learn to ride a horse and building a relationship), music therapy, art therapy, swimming. They work together with al lot of professionals and offer the families valuable time-tested support and education for children within al ages (Triple P, Love and Logic, The incredible years).
After school, the group counselors pick the children up from school, the children stay there until 07:00pm max and they return to there families. Every child has his own file and goals he is working with.
Olive Crest
Olive Crest is dedicated to preventing child abuse, to treating and educating at-risk children and to preserving the family…’One Life at a Time’.
You can compare Olive Crest with a Elker (the organisation I work for).
Olive Crest is a big organisation that provides protection, care and cure for children and adolescents.
Olive Crest provides help to those who are in ‘The System’. These children and families are in the system because of a history of physical child abuse and neglecting, most of them were placed by court mandate.
A big difference between Olive Crest and Elker is the help Elker provides to children and adolescents who were placed on a volunteer base with approving of the family (without court mandate) and the reason for placement at Elker is not necessarily child abuse or neglecting, but dysfunction of the family because of severe behavioural problems of the child, mental disorder of the child and/or parents, unstable home situation or threat of a dangerous peer-group.
After removing from the house Olive Crest tries to find a suitable family or foster care for the children and adolescents, if there is no family or foster care available or possible Olive Crest provides residential care. They provide different residential homes for different target group.
Orangewood is a referrer to a group home of Olive Crest.
We have seen some cottages (the rotary sponsored the environment of these cottages) for different target groups. I tell you about two groups.
In every group home lives a hostess, she can live there for free and keep an eye out and help the children and adolescents. There are also group counsellors who are trained within the competency assumptions towards the target group. They keep the sexes separate, if they are brothers and sisters they can live in the same house, but that’s a tough one on the matching with other adolescents. This is a problem because if they keep separating the sexes the unit is never entirely filled and they receive less money.
The adolescents learn social skills, skills for independencies, treatment by a psychiatrist of behaviour therapist if needed.
Olive Crest also has a Transitional Housing Placement Program, this program provides them housing and support for ages 16-18 whose only option as they approach adulthood is living independently.
The placements in this organisation is state funded because its mandated by court.
Personal observation
After visiting several organizations, talking to different professionals it seems that there is a grey area in the youth care system.
What about the adolescent that is not criminal, no court mandate (yet), not abused/neglected, not an orphan, has severe behavioral problems and (probably) mental disorder who still lives at home and is not be considered for medi-cal (heavy criteria state insurance).
So it seems the government has no place for this special target group, first they, or the situation have to get worse for care and cure to come. What is the criteria of a more worse situation?
There are some church initiatives and community initiatives but then you have to belong to this community or church and its depends of the funding they are getting. Foundations like this exist because of generous people who care, a bonus is the tax refund they receive. Most of the time the more welfare people give amount of money to initiatives and foundations.
As long as there is no general health insurance system the more welfare people can decide to give financial gifts to organizations and foundations they prefer. The more welfare people determine which target group receives help if they have no money.
I want to challenge this personal observation for the next two weeks.
Wow Ellen, impressive!
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