An Evaluation of Teaching‐family (Achievement Place) Group Homes for Juvenile Offenders

Abstract

Juvenile crime is a serious problem for which no treatment approach has been found to be reliably effective. This outcome evaluation assessed during and posttreatment effectiveness of Teaching-Family group home treatment programs for juvenile offenders. The evaluation included the original Achievement Place program, which was the prototype for the development of the Teaching-Family treatment approach, 12 replications of Achievement Place, and 9 comparison group home programs. Primary dependent measures were retrieved from court and police files and included number of alleged offenses, percentage of youths involved in those alleged offenses, and percentage of youths institutionalized. Other dependent measures were subjective ratings of effectiveness obtained from the program consumers, including the group home residents. The results showed difference during treatment favoring the Teaching-Family programs on rate of alleged criminal offenses, percentage of youths involved in those offenses, and consumer ratings of the programs. The consumer ratings provided by the youths and their school teachers were found to be inversely and significantly correlated with the reduction of criminal offenses during treatment. There were no significant differences during treatment on measures of noncriminal offenses (e.g., truancy, runaway, and curfew violations). In the posttreatment year, none of the differences between the groups was significant on any of the outcome measures. The results are discussed in terms of measurement and design issues in the evaluation of delinquency treatment programs and in relation to the evaluation of Teaching-Family group homes by Richard Jones and his colleagues.

The Greatest Requirement of Sense of Modern Education: Individual Attention and Teaching-Family Model

“…Thus, the model argues that the family based educational activities should be provided for people (Bernfeld, at al, 1990). As for Kirigin, Braukmann and Atwater (1982), in their model named "An evaluation of teaching-family group homes for juvenile offenders", they offer group homes with the purpose of not pushing children into crime and educating juvenile offenders. In an education program to be prepared for this purpose, it is emphasized that home programs should be arranged and the frequency of education activities in proper places should be increased (Kirigin at al., 1982).…”

Children and Adolescents

“…In treatment foster care, carefully selected and extensively trained foster parents in collaboration with a therapist offer adolescents a highly structured foster care placement over a number of months in a foster family setting (Kirgin et al, 1982;Chamberlain,1990;Chamberlain & Reid, 1991).…”

Children as Service Evaluators

“…The services included 'teaching-family' homes for young offenders (Kirigin et al, 1982;Solnick et al 1981), psychiatric inpatients (Furst et al, 1993;Kazdin et al, 1987), outpatients of psychiatric departments (Loff, Trigg & Cassels, 1987) and community based services (Rosen et al, 1994;Shapiro, Welker & Jacobson, 1997Stüntzner-Gibson, Koren & DeChillo, 1995.…”

“…Two studies involving adolescent clients of 'teaching-family' group homes used a specially designed Youth Consumer Evaluation questionnaire to evaluate client relationships with programme staff (Solnick et al, 1981;Kirigin et al, 1982). The 15 item questionnaire included questions about the fairness, concern, effectiveness and pleasantness of the teaching-parents.…”

“…Kvist et al (1991) reported significant differences between children's satisfaction with different features of a paediatric service. There is more evidence on discriminant validity of satisfaction questionnaires from mental health services (Kirigin et al, 1982;Solnick et al, 1981;Stüntzner-Gibson et al, 1995). Furst et al (1993) also reported a significant increase in client satisfaction following staff training in a children's psychiatric hospital.…”