Exploitation in the Name of "Specialty Schooling": The Exploitation of Youth and Families in the Name of "Specialty Schooling:" What Counts as Sufficient Data? What are Psychologists to Do?

Protecting Youth Placed in Unlicensed, Unregulated Residential “Treatment” Facilities

“…Youth who attended such programs, parents, and former staff have also made powerful public statements about abusive experiences with some of these facilities. These issues have been discussed in publications of the American Psychological Association: Public Interest Directorate (Pinto, Friedman, & Epstein, 2005) and the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry (Friedman et al, 2006b) and in presentations at meetings of the American Bar Association (American Bar Association, 2006), American Psychological Association (Pinto, Epstein, Lewis, & Whitehead, 2006), and Research and Training Center for Children's Mental Health (Friedman et al, 2006a).…”

“…In the past year, A START has highlighted the problems of private, unregulated residential treatment facilities through presentations at major conferences of professional and parent organizations (Friedman et al, 2006a; Pinto et al, 2006) and published papers in key professional journals (Pinto et al, 2005; Friedman et al, 2006b). To clarify, the focus has been on facilities that are not licensed and not operated by public or governmental systems but operate private, residential facilities for troubled or difficult children or youth under the age of 18.…”

Experiential Therapy in the Mental Health Treatment of Adolescents

“…Some of these issues have also been detailed in several articles by a group of researchers called ASTART (Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic, and Appropriate Use of Residential Treatment), with a particular focus on mistreatment and abuse of youth in residential care. Examples of these articles include Behar, Friedman, Pinto, Katz-Leavy, & Jones, (2007) ;Friedman, Pinto, Behar, Bush, Chirolla, & Epstein, et al (2006);and Pinto, Friedman, & Epstein (2005) and make a strong case for regulations to stop abuses occurring primarily at unlicensed and unregulated facilities. They advocate adoption of policies recommended by the American Bar Association (2007) that included closing facilities who cannot provide evidence of their efficacy.…”

“…Cited as fact in several places (Behar, Friedman, Pinto, Katz-Leavy, & Jones, 2007;Pinto, Friedman, & Epstein, 2005) are figures from a newspaper article that estimates (without citing any evidence) 10,000 to 14,000 school age children in private residential treatment (Rubin, 2004). Friedman (2009), coordinator of A START said in a presentation during "Abuse of Youth in Residential Treatment: A Call to Action," "We were dismayed when they (GAO) were no more successful than others in coming up with estimates of the number of youth in private residential placements" (p. 3).…”

Unlicensed residential programs: The next challenge in protecting youth.

“…There has been a dearth of accurate information on just how many children go to sleep every night in a residential treatment program, for example, or on how many children benefit from or are harmed by these programs, or on how many programs actually exist (e.g., Edwards, 1994). Second, although there is a serious lack of adequate information, it is clear from many reports that a significant number of children are being mistreated in such programs and, in some cases, are even dying in them (Kobt, 2005; Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services [Montana DPHHS], 2001; Pinto, Friedman, & Epstein, 2005). Third, there is a glaring absence of independent research on the effectiveness of these programs in helping youth or on the total positive and negative effects of these programs on the residents.…”