QUESTION:
Can you comment on the finding that :
Most juvenile placements practice “positive peer culture” that is often injurious to children with disabilities, who may be unable to conform to rigorous point systems. Concerned that Michigan juvenile facilities are structuring programming around positive peer culture programs, MACED staff is surveying all Michigan juvenile facilities in order to measure the prevalence of these programs.
http://www.michkids.org/index_files/page0028.htm
Charley's Response:
When I think of positive peer culture I think of a bunch of youth, hanging out, truely enjoying each others company, being devoted to each other so that if one got messed with the others would stand with him or her and where they youth don't lie, cheat, steal, or hit on each others girl friend/boy friend. I think of a group of youth who evolve a decent
moral code with each other that has derivatives in the ways they were
raised, but is reinvented to meet the needs of their age of being youth.
It is obscene that some presumptious program people have co-opted that
term to mean an artificial program culture that has nothing to do with
the youth's relationships and is 100% a reflection of what NON-youth
presume to be the way to behave. Furthermore to disobey this "youth
culture" you get restrained and secluded and loose "points." Restraints
and Seclusion have been proven to be dangerous both physically and
psychologically.
Point systems have been shown, according to my sources,
to have absolutely no lasting effect on youth as a treatment devise.
Youth's behavior is shaped temporarily due to the consequences of not
getting points, i.e. privilages, but it is a sham and tends to undercut
legitimate youth development. Teaching youth to be "manipulative" in the
culture of the treatment program builds a pattern of insincerity and
dependence on adults that is destructive.
Charley
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