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Thursday, September 5, 1974
University Daily Kausan
Student aids youth rehabilitation
By BETTY HAEGELIN
Reporter
Poverty, a broken home, lack of parental guidance and love.
These conditions and many more, are likely to result in a youth who will create trouble for society and himself. When he does, Dick Baron, Springfield, Mo., graduate student in psychology, is involved with the local police in an effort him back into the mainstream of society.
This program is a youth rehabilitation system in which the greatest emphasis is placed on behavioral skills, such as how to get along with other people.
The program is a youth rehabilitation system, exemplified in Lawrence by Achievement Place, an alternative to institutional juvenile correctional facilities, originated by Dr. Ellery Phillips, adjunct assistant professor of human development.
Achievement Place is a program for boys age 12-15, which uses the teaching family model. Instead of being sent to an institution with 300 boys, staffed by a few specialists, the juvenile is placed in a correctional "home" with only six or seven other youths.
This is staffed by a married couple with training in juvenile problems.
Using the Achievement Place home for a model, the State Department of Social and
Rehabilitational Services decided to use the same methods and goals in an institutional setting at the Kansas Vocational Rehabilitation Center in Salina, where Baron became involved in the program in 1972.
This program in Salina dealt with 19 boys, ages 16-17, and was unusually successful. Only 15 to 20 per cent of the boys returned to school or were transferred to a 63 to 70 per cent national average.
"The reasons for our success were many," Baron said. "First, we were adopting an already finely developed treatment model. Then the staff in the youth adjustment model were truly interested in helping the kids in trouble. Finally, we were able to create a supportive support, including their willingness to take the necessary risks for a new program."
In the institutional setting of Achievement Place the true "family" model was impossible to duplicate completely, according to Baron. However, one person from the day shift was paired with a staff member on the shift, forming a teaching team response. This three-60-second ratio is much better than it is available in most institutions, he said.
Baron said most institutions had a professional staff working from eight to five years.
"It's impossible to keep up with this many youths, and do it effectively," he said.
cottage parents who took care of 16 to 24 kids for most of the day.
The average stay for a boy at the Salina center is 3.8 months, at an annual cost of $3,500 a youth. This is in contrast to the average stay for a youth in a conventional program.
Baron left the Salina center in August, and now is involved in setting up an Achievement Place for older boys in Lawrence for his doctoral work. This will mean the same basic model as the program for the younger boys, but with a few differences.
"With the 12- to 15-year-olds," Baron said, "our primary goal is to just get them through school, because if they can learn to use technology, it will be able to function in other areas also. But
when you get to a guy 16 or 17 years old, by law he doesn't have to go to school, and for some of them, orientation towards a job is more important."
To do this, Baron is contacting local businesses to involve them in a job training program.
"We try to get the youths home more every weekend anyway," Baron said. "This is to both teach and test youth skills, or use otherwise he doesn't learn how to say it." He said that it's properly in society. This is also a reward. He will work hard for this privilege."
The program doesn't have prescribed sentences from a judge, and, instead, the boy works his way out by proving he is to be a contributing member of society. He pays per cent of this lesson. Baron said, is learning how to get along with other people.
International Club Elections
Monday, Sept. 9
7:00 p.m.
Forum Room—Kansas Union
Memberships sold at door
Gentlemen's Quarters
Creative Haircutting
843-2719 for Appt.
9th & III
Sell it through Kansan want ads. Call the classified department at 864-4358.
W. 9th St. Center
The University Events Committee decided yesterday that it didn't have jurisdiction over the hot potato of whether university groups a fee to use KU buildings.
So the committee tossed the hot potato by saying that the appropriate KU business officials should set a building use fee if they see a need for one.
Then the potato was handed to the KU administration, who dropped it back on the committee and asked reconsideration of the hourly rates.
"We're saying that it isn't really the concern of United States, the Comm. Committee," Taylor said.
Building-use fee up in air
The hot potato has been bouncing from hand to hand since early summer. The committee first passed it to a sub team and passed it back with a proposal including a 30-minute charge of $50 for Allen Field House and $12 for Hoch Auditorium.
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