Blog 4!

There was an incident at my agency in early 2018 that made me question the methods of our treatment model. I believe keeping kids in Residential Treatment for the shortest time possible should be the focus of every agency. I noticed that my agency did not move kids into “Phase 2” of their discharge plan until they were 6 months away from leaving. I always questioned why don’t we just start them in a discharge phase and focus on reintegrating to the community as soon as possible? It seemed like we waited until the 6-9 month interval to start the discharge process. I had a lot of questions on the process and if keeping youth in treatment for that significant period of time would be more harmful than helpful. I researched length of sty averages (combined with evidence based treatment models) across the state of Illinois vs my agency and found that we were one of the highest. Luckily weeks later my boss invited me to an outcomes training at the DCFS training office in Chicago. I attended the training and the first speaker blew me away. He was the CEO of an Agency in New York and he explained how their average length of stay was 7 months accompanied by a 98% success rate! I did find out that this agency specifically was VERY well funded and able to even build apartment buildings to reintegrate clients into the community, but the length of stay factor stuck with me. I researched evidence based practices in my agencies specific treatment model compared to that of other agencies and they were all very similar. The outlying factor with my agency compared to others was we have the highest risk clientele. We also receive many clients that transfer from agencies after being in placement for roughly 12 months, I started to realize that those agencies send kids off to keep their average length of stay down. Our agency will take the most troubled kids and not reintegrate them until they are ready. My research led me to realize that the DCFS process towards discharge was much more delayed that that of privately funded youth. DCFS youth were more likely not able to return home and finding a foster care fit for a high-risk client can take up to 16 months itself. That was the gap in our length of stay. I dug into numbers and found DCFS clients average length of stay was 4 months longer than privately funded. I have noticed that just one question led to ample research, and even hearing a speaker clear up some difficulty in managing length of stay. It was shocking how much I learned from google scholar combined with research on my agencies treatment model. My new knowledge of evidence based practices that formulate treatment models for specific levels of clients and different tiers of agencies really helped me grow and gain an understanding of the field. I believe the research I completed, the speaker from New York, and speaking to peers at other agencies made a difference on my opinion of our treatment model combined with length of stay.