ABSTRACT
In rehabilitative residential settings in the United States, there is a strong tendency to address mainly the young residents’ lack in knowledge and skills while giving them psychotherapeutic support. Such programs also tend to give primacy in their mode of organization to operational efficiency. Thus, they often overlook the disruption of the child’s or adolescent’s developmental process, a disruption that cannot be mended satisfactorily in an institution organized primarily for operational efficiency, didactic educational processes, clinical therapy, and behavioral control. What is needed is a growth-supportive community that minimizes messages of deficit and maximizes messages of possibility to the child; a community life pattern in contrast to an institutional life pattern; a planned environment in contrast to planned activities; a child’s basic experience of choice in contrast to the requirement of obedience; and a lifestyle that confirms belonging and destiny in contrast to alienation and fate.
