A Parent-Based Description of Residential Treatment

Family-Centered Residential Treatment: Knowledge, Research, and Values Converge

“…Spencer's themes are mirrored in a qualitative study by Demmitt and Joanning (1998), who conducted interviews with 17 parents. Again, the main theme emerging from interviews was parents' desire for increased involvement as experts and partners in their child's treatment.…”

Engaging Families in the Residential Treatment Process Utilizing Family-Directed Structural Therapy

“…Qualitative Inquiry Observations Regarding Family Involvement/Therapy in Residential Treatment Demmitt and Joanning (1998) conducted focus groups with 17 parents (13 women and 4 men, the majority of whom were Caucasian American) that employed an emergent design, beginning with general questions about families' experiences regarding their child's placement at the residential treatment facility. The main theme of the focus groups was a desire to be more involved in their child's treatment and treated more as a "partner" in the process.…”

“…For example, Demmitt and Joanning (1998) report that divorced parents sometimes feel that staff "takes sides" with one parent. Use of FDST and the adult assessment tool allows each adult family member to have a clear voice in the therapeutic process, as well as enabling service providers to understand the viewpoint and perspective of both parents (McLendon et al, 2005;Luke Hatch, personal communication, May 28, 2011).…”

“…Yet, while there is a growing emphasis on specification of standards of treatment and care, as well as child and family outcomes, there is currently no national set of indicators to guide service provision in these settings (Lieberman, 2004). Furthermore, several authors cite the need for more family involvement in residential treatment and point to improved outcomes for children and families when families are included in a youth's care (Demmitt & Joanning, 1998;Gorske, Srebalus, & Walls, 2003;Landsman, Groza, Tyler, & Malone, 2001;Stage, 1999), yet there are also no "best practices" or even broad guidelines suggesting what types or methods of family therapy/interventions might provide efficacious outcomes with this population. This article introduces Family-Directed Structural Therapy (FDST) and corresponding assessment tools that begins to address this gap in the provision of residential care to youth and their families.…”

In, out and after care: Young adults' views on their lives, as children, in a therapeutic residential establishment

“…The literature on process within TCHs is concentrated around three discrete but overlapping themes: how TCHs operate overall (Rivard, Bloom, McCorkle and Abramovitz, 2005;Scott and Lorenc, 2007); individual organisational aspects, such as the quality of the therapeutic provision (Egelund and Jakobsen, 2009;Pavkov, Negash, Lourie and Hug, 2010); and the experience of stakeholders, chief among whom are staff (Davidson-Arad, Dekel and Wozner, 2004;Nickerson, Brooks, Colby, Rickert and Salamone, 2006), family members (Demmitt and Joanning, 1998;Springer and Stahmann, 1998) and the children themselves (Grupper and Mero-Jaffe, 2008). …”