The NEN Blog

Compliance or Innovation: Choose One

2010-09-03T09:05:00.000-07:00

Wonder why the lockstep 'compliance' mentality of so many grants -- the endless timetables and workplans and logic models -- rarely results in innovation? This video by Dan Pink offers some critical insights. Listen up, funders.

RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

An Unalloyed Good Thing? Not Necessarily

2010-05-14T12:20:00.000-07:00

As volunteer managers and nonprofit leaders know, the limiting factor for volunteer impact is NOT a shortage of volunteers, stipended or not. Instead, the limiting factors are the capacity of nonprofits to deploy them effectively, and the unusability of untrained, ill-prepared, temporary volunteer workers. ~ Blue Avocado, on the 'sacred cow' of volunteering

So true. That's why we just produced The Hidden Workforce, a toolkit and promising-practices report for child- and youth-serving agencies considering starting, or hoping to improve, their volunteer programs. We believe that 1) it's foolish to squander resources, and the volunteers are a resources; but that 2) if you don't manage volunteers correctly, you'd be better off without them. In other words, you have to train them and manage them like you would staff. The benefit? After that, they're free. Better yet, they bring all kind of offbeat skills and perspectives that can enrich the work you do.

Check out the toolkit.

Changes in DSM Prompt Controversy

2010-04-05T10:31:00.000-07:00

The 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) will not be published until 2013, but the discussion about the proposed changes to the new manual is already animated. The DSM V has been released in draft form by the American Psychological Association (APA) and for the first time the drafting committee is accepting public feedback on the latest adaptations. And feedback is what they are getting, both positive and negative.

One major proposed change is to create ‘Autism Spectrum Disorder’ and eliminate separate diagnoses for conditions such as Asperger’s syndrome. Instead, individuals will be diagnosed on the Autism spectrum, which Asperger’s will fall under. This proposed change has elicited many responses from the Asperger’s community, according to a recent NPR story.

"The intent is to try to make the diagnosis of autism clearer and to better reflect the science," says Catherine Lord, director of the University of Michigan Autism and Communication Disorders Center. Lord is part of the group that decided to consolidate autism-related categories, including Asperger's.

But the change is going to be hard for some people with Asperger's, says Michael John Carley, executive director of the Global and Regional Asperger Syndrome Partnership in New York and author of Asperger's From the Inside Out. "I personally am probably going to have a very hard time calling myself autistic," says Carley, who was diagnosed with Asperger's years ago. Many people with Asperger's take pride in a diagnosis that probably describes some major historical figures, including Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison, Carley says. Under the new system, those people would represent just one extreme of a spectrum. On the other extreme is "somebody who might have to wear adult diapers and maybe a head-restraining device. This is very hard for us to swallow," he says.

The change makes a lot of sense, says Roy Richard Grinker, an anthropologist at George Washington University who has studied autism in various cultures. Eliminating the Asperger's diagnosis won't mean that people in that category will lose access to services, Grinker says. That's because "almost anybody with an Asperger's diagnosis also could qualify for what is called autistic disorder," he says, adding that the change could make it easier for some parents to get help for a child with Asperger's. Right now, states including California provide services to children with autism but not those with Asperger's, Grinker says. "So removing Asperger's really removes what is a false barrier to parents getting care for their kids."

(Hear the story at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123527833)

Another proposed change is the addition of 'temper dysregulation with dysphoria' (TDD), a category created to prevent a diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children who don’t meet all the criteria but warrant some type of treatment. Again, this proposal has been met with mixed reactions.

“Temper dysregulation with dysphoria is proposed to prevent misdiagnosis of children who have bursts of rage and can be moody, anxious and irritable. Such children are often diagnosed as having bipolar disorder and treated accordingly, sometimes with powerful medications. The diagnosis of bipolar "is being given, we believe, too frequently," said Dr. David Shaffer, a member of the work group on disorders in childhood and adolescence. In reality, when such children are tracked into adulthood, very few of them turn out to be bipolar, he said.”

(See article at: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-dsm10-2010feb10,0,2650262.story)

But others worry that kids with normal temper tantrums will be labeled as TDD, which can cause serious ramifications. Critics argue that [TDD] would only compound the problem of over-treatment. “They are close to treating the children like guinea pigs. I think that's appalling and outrageous," said Christopher Lane, author of "Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness." "The APA should be moving to prevent such controversial practices, not encouraging them, as it is doing here." (See article at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/10/AR2010021000009.html)

The APA committee is taking feedback on the proposed changes until April 20th through the website http://www.dsm5.org/. We also want to know what you think about the proposals. Will TDD cut down on children being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which has seen an exponential increase in recent years? Will the elimination of Asperger’s syndrome as a separate diagnosis help more children get treatment?

~ Mindi Wisman, NEN Research Associate

A Personal Perspective on the Multi-generational Family

2010-03-24T12:19:00.000-07:00

The March 28 Into Practice bulletin included an item on a recent Pew study on the growth in the number of live-in extended families (The Return of the Multi-Generational Family Household). Reading it, I was brought back to my own family experience. Growing up in the late '60s and '70s, my family was part of the 27% who lived in a multigenerational home. We had my great aunt, my grandparents, my parents, and my four siblings living in our home in southwestern Pennsylvania. The house often felt very crowded, there were challenges getting along, and there were times I longed to be an only child, but most of the time, I enjoyed the experience of having different perspectives and viewpoints on the world.

My maternal great aunt lived in our home off and on throughout my entire childhood. She was an independent woman with very strong views, which she expressed at any opportunity. She and my mother shared this character trait and tended to be on opposite ends of most topics; this made for interesting conversations in which I readily participated. As I interacted with my peers in school, I realized early on that I had a very different view of the world than they did. I remember comparing my perspective on the political scene, government in general, human rights and environmentalism to the perspectives, or lack thereof, of my peers. After all, how many nine-year-olds wanted to discuss the political wrangling happening in DC or the impact of industry on the health of our planet? These are the kinds of discussion I had with my great aunt, a conservative republican and my mom, a moderate democrat. Even at nine, I was a proud liberal democrat. I owe my political activism, then and now, to my mother and great aunt and the conversations we had.

My grandparents moved in when they began having health problems. They needed support to take care of their basic needs in this last chapter of their lives. I was very aware that my grandparents were dying and they came to our house to be with family and to be taken care of. As my grandparents moved along this last journey, I participated in their lives; I listened to their stories about their lives and I told them what was going on in my life. These were challenging times and they certainly helped shape my life. My interactions with my grandparents further separated my experiences from my peers. I understood very early that life is finite. This led me to analyze risks in a way that was very different from my peers. My friends would often say things like 'you only live once' and I would reply 'yes and it is up to us to make sure we have lived well.' I certainly took my share of risks, especially in adolescence, but they were not impulsive risks but rather calculated risks.

I know my great aunt and grandparents experienced both the benefits and challenges of living in a multigenerational family. The study mentions some of the benefits of multigenerational homes, especially for older adults. But I feel compelled to emphasize the benefits young people can experience in the multigenerational household. Some of the benefits I value from my multigenerational household experience include an active involvement in politics and social justice. I am comfortable with entire human life span, including the aging and the death process, which I experienced as a gift to be shared. I have a tendency to think about history and look to history to apply lessons to current situations; this comes from that story telling of lives past. There was a lot of adult/youth interaction and a lot of family time. While I struggled making valuable adult connections in my community, I knew I had them in my family.

Our society is moving back to a way of living in the world together that used to be the norm and it is important that we as service providers understand the special impact the multi-generational lifestyle has on the entire family. There are any number of ways we can help families adjust to the multigenerational household so they can benefit from the experience. Many families will struggle with this adjustment without support, especially if the move towards a multigenerational household is due to economic issues, legal or custody issues, or other stressful circumstances. Families may need help dealing with the circumstances that led to them becoming a multigenerational household. Families will need to establish boundaries, particularly around income and budgeting, parenting, and household expectations. They may need to gain an understanding of the different ways the generations think, perceive the world, and communicate. At the very least, we need to help families navigate the tricky task of keeping the peace while meeting their needs. These are interesting times.

~ Cindy Carraway-Wilson

The Earthquake Here at Home

2010-03-13T11:01:00.000-08:00

The literally earth-shattering crises in Haiti and Chile have begun to strike me as a metaphor for the crisis -- smaller but with devastating effects of its own -- hitting our social service system. I feel this way because every conversation I'm having with agency directors these days sounds the same: They're laying off staff, cutting programs, and trying to feel their way into whatever new types of services their state is now prioritizing. One director wrote us: "We have closed four of our five residential facilities and have laid off 60 people, with more coming; our last program looks like it will go in July, leaving only the homeless work, which we have to fundraise for to break even. No more receptionist or human resource person, and the other support people will be gone soon. The board has cut all retirement contributions, no raises, COA won't be renewed. Not much fun here." Not much fun indeed.

If there is opportunity in this crisis, many agencies are struggling to find it. NPR listeners got an earful yesterday about the very real consequences of cutting child abuse programs, but of course we in the field already know all about them. What about the former clients of closed programs? Are they miraculously improved and back on their feet? And will our staff themselves be soon joining the ranks of the needy? Yes, I know -- we should appreciate that we are not in Haiti or Chile. And indeed we're nothing like those countries, not really. Here in the U.S., we have the infrastructure, though presently under-supported; we have the resources, though presently misappropriated; and most importantly we have the know-how to do much better than we currently are. So I, for one, am living for the day that we bring all of these capacities into some sensible alignment.

Melanie Goodman, Executive Director

It's a Micro, Micro, Micro, Micro World

2010-02-23T12:24:00.000-08:00

You’ve heard of microeconomics and micro-organisms, but how about micro-volunteering? We uncovered the trend while doing our own research on volunteering (we'll have a toolkit available soon, targeted to child- and youth-serving agencies).

What is micro-volunteering, exactly? It's emerged over the past few years as a way of melding today’s technology and need for instant gratification with the desire to make a difference. Organizations like The Extraordinaries and Kiva are leading the way in this new idea of how to affect change. From a recent article:

The Extraordinaries delivers micro-volunteer opportunities to mobile phones that can be done on-demand and on-the-spot. Through The Extraordinaries, you might be able to use your smart phone to: translate a foreign-language document into English, add identifying tags to photos and videos for a museum, give advice to a college applicant, snap a picture of a pothole that needs patching and zap it to the proper authorities or spot a rare woodpecker for the Audubon Society.

Kiva.org, a microlending site, allows people to easily lend money to the working poor. So far, some 520,000 people have loaned more than $80 million to people in 184 countries, according to Kiva's reports. Using PayPal or a credit card, a visitor to the Kiva website can loan a struggling entrepreneur in a developing country $25 or more. The organization says the money is usually paid back within a year. (Read about it here.)

Micro-volunteering or micro-giving also played a significant part in the relief efforts for the recent devastating earthquake in Haiti. The American Red Cross collected $22 million of its $103 million dollars recently given for Haiti from text-message donations—an unprecedented amount. The micro-volunteering trend has also attracted media attention from CNN and Time.

It's hard to argue against micro-volunteering (though some experts do, saying that it panders to the commitment-phobic by making real change seem easier than it is), but, since the trend's here, we're more interested in how the direct-service world can make use of it.

Can positive change come from such brief outpourings of support? Or, is this an over-simplification of the hard work that is needed by volunteers to affect real change in the world? Is this trend here to stay? If so, how can agencies utilize it to benefit their clients and organization?

Abstinence-until-Ready?

2010-02-12T06:23:00.000-08:00

"It is the first randomized controlled study to demonstrate that an abstinence-only intervention reduced the percentage of adolescents who reported any sexual intercourse for a long period," according to a statement by the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, where the study's lead researcher John B. Jemmott III is a professor.

The news last week about an abstinence program finally working - working! - has astounded and discomfitted many in our field. Does it mean the right was ... right?

As with all studies, you have to dig deep to really find out what was really going on. Connect for Kids has done a good job at doing that. And it turns out that the abstinence progam being studied was far from the traditional, moralistic variety. And there's news in that for everybody - for people in our field, who want to decrease the incidence of teen pregnancy and risky sex, and for those who championed abstinence-til-marriage approaches, which warned (absurdly) that sex before marriage was "likely to cause psychological harm.'

Is there a middle way? Say, 'sex only when you're ready'?

http://www.connectforkids.org/node/7133

Teen Runaways: Which Ones Do We Need to Worry About?

2009-12-30T15:47:00.000-08:00

From JoinTogether Online:

Most runaway teens return home on their own shortly after leaving, and few fit the stereotype of deeply troubled youth, according to researchers at UCLA.

Science Daily reported Dec. 5 that researcher Norweeta G. Milburn of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA said that stereotypes of runaways have been formed because most studies have focused on teens who repeatedly run away.

"Our finding goes against the grain of what most people envision a homeless teenager's life to be -- a life filled with maltreatment, substance abuse, disorganization, conflict and violence," said Milburn. "While that is certainly true of chronic runaways, in fact, more than two-thirds of newly homeless youth leave the streets, resolve their family differences and go home.

"Further, the key appears to be that a family intervention, no matter how brief, can improve the chances that new runaways will go home and stay home," Milburn said.
Teens who maintain relationships with non-runaway friends, have stayed in school and sense the support of their parents -- especially mothers -- are more likely to return home, the research found.

The study, which tracked 183 newly homeless adolescents in Los Angeles, appears in the December 2009 issue of the Journal of Research on Adolescence.

Not surprisingly, we had a bit of a reaction to this piece.

I checked with Doug Tanner, our resident homeless youth specialist. He said:

Not new information – but potentially dangerous if improperly interpreted.

This is similar to statistics documenting that 75% of homeless people are homeless for less than 90 days and only 25% are chronically homeless. However, at any given time the majority of those that are homeless are chronically homeless. This is because the 75% who are not chronically homeless cycle through while the chronic population remains homeless. This is a well documented and often misrepresented fact.

So, this is not new news. It is just another statistical spin.

The percentage of runaways who do not return home, have no functional home to return to, and experience trauma and other bad stuff as a result of neglect and homelessness are very likely a small percentage of homeless youth, but at any given moment in time are likely to make up a large percentage - possibly even a majority of RHY youth.

The key word in this summary below is “two-thirds of newly homeless” etc. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if 80% of newly homeless youth returned home within 30 days. There are more fresh “newly homeless” kids every day – thousands and thousands. They aren’t the ones we need to be the most concerned about – AND NEITHER SHOULD THIS RESEARCHER WHO THINKS HE’S ON TO SOMETHING NEW.

Another example of sorts: in World War II, only about 20% of American soldiers saw combat. But because the powers that be discovered that experienced soldiers were more effective than replacements, the chances were very high that anyone who did see combat was stuck there for the entire war unless they were badly wounded, captured or killed. Meanwhile, everyone else (the other 80%) cycled in and out of assignments. The chronically homeless, young and old, are like combat soldiers in WWII – everyone else gets relieved, but they’re stuck.

The New Science on 'Orchid Children': Considering the Implications

2009-12-15T07:15:00.000-08:00

From the December issue of the Atlantic Monthly comes an important article that reconsiders the potential of "vulnerable" children to contribute to society. "Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere," the intro reads. "A few of us however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and anti-social, also underlie humankind's phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail. But with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society's most creative, successful, and happy people." It's the ultimate "strengths-based" approach. The good news: there's a new body of science to back it up.

Link: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/dobbs-orchid-gene

NYT Story Hightlights the 'New Runaways'

2009-10-26T08:15:00.000-07:00

From today's New York Times:

Recession Drives Surge in Youth Runaways

As more families face economic hardships, experts have seen an increasing number of children leave home for life on the streets, including many under 13.

One reader commented:

I never considered myself a "runaway" though I left my family at age 15. My heart goes out to these young people. I know what it is like to feel that kind of desperation. I also know the feeling of liberation once you leave an untenable situation.In my case, I can only say that what saved my life was a woman who brought me into her home and gave me safety, believed what I was telling her (though the stories were very slow from my end out of shame and fear), and asked for little in return. Her generousity of spirit and unbending confidence in me is what helped me to heal and develop a life for myself.I did not use drugs or alcohol, and at 17, enrolled in an Ivy League college on financial aid and grants, and supported myself 100% from working bad jobs while going through school, which I completed in four years.What every runaway needs is one single compassionate person to believe them, and in them, and with little effort will bring him/her into their fold, listen and love. This is what humanity is all about.

Doug Tanner, NEN's technical assistance coordinator and a specialist in runaway and homeless youth programs, add this:

This NYT story, combined with the video “When No One’s Looking,” provide a powerful and personal look at youth homelessness. We know that families are under extreme stress due to the recession. Given the usual increases in substance abuse and domestic violence when times are tough, it stands to reason that youth are suffering in disproportionate numbers. In a small study on disabilities among homeless youth we did in the mid-90’s, 60% of the youth who participated in a Transitional Living Program in Greenfield, MA were disabled in some way -- physically, cognitively or emotionally. The personal stories of the youth in the NYTimes story and the corresponding video were all too familiar in that respect. Few people can go through months or years of fear, malnutrition, and violence of the sort that is encountered living “on the street” and survive without long-term or permanent damage. The damage caused often results in chronic disease, mental disorders or physical disabilities.

It’s important to remember that only a few of these kids will actually survive intact. In our society, we tend to focus on those who overcome difficult circumstances – we are inspired by the remarkable stories of courage and persistence that some survivors are able to tell. However, in real life, many, if not most will be harmed for life. AIDS, HepC, pre-mature cancer, PTSD, emotional instability, substance abuse and terrible injuries are just some what’s in store for them.

Ironically, the cost of providing adequate alternatives to many, if not most of the youth who are in these circumstances could be easily done if the country only would prioritize the issue. State child protective systems are not the answer. Most homeless youth are too old to be served effectively by child protective systems. One part of the answer is really simple – expand by tenfold the Runaway and Homeless Youth programs we have now. Despite the fact that they have proven to be cost effective with demonstrated results, there are still only about 200 Transitional Living Programs in the US. Many states only have one or two, some have none. The combined cost of these programs is only 40 million dollars a year – an absolute drop-in-the-bucket in terms of federal expenditures. The abstinence programs, that we have hopefully seen the last of, were costing us 100 million dollars a year. Put all of that money into transitional living, shelter and outreach programs for youth and young adults, then multiply it by three (still less than half a billion!) and we’d be able to do something about this – and save ourselves 100 fold in the next 10 or 20 years – not only in terms of less crime, homelessness and disease, but in return on investment when youth who participate in RHY programs grow up to become healthy, contributing citizens.

Money to Burn in Georgia

2009-10-15T08:02:00.000-07:00

This story from today's Washington Post caught my attention, and not, shall we say, in a good way. My first thought: When staff from children's agencies have to jump in Boston Harbor in February to raise money for their "cause" (which is actually society's cause, of course), it is hard to imagine lawyers, however dedicated they may be, reaping this kind of windfall for merely doing their job. I'm all for advocates making a living wage (me being one of those advocates), and even profiting through exceptional competence. But when states are cutting services to children all over the place, when residential treatment as a very concept is endangered, why not put that $4.5 million toward - I don't know, the children in question? Just a thought. Public service lawyers everywhere are encouraged to disagree strenuously.

From the Post:

The Supreme Court spends a sizable portion of its time dealing with lawyers gone bad: the ones who miss critical filing deadlines, put up halfhearted defenses of clients facing death row, give bad advice with disastrous results.

On Wednesday, the court was faced with what to do about lawyers who do good. And also, extremely well.

The justices focused on a group of lawyers from a children's rights group and a private law firm who won a transformation of the state of Georgia's dysfunctional foster-care system. Their work on behalf of 3,000 children so impressed the federal judge who presided over the case that he awarded them a bonus of $4.5 million -- on top of the $6 million in legal fees he told the state to pay.

It made for an animated debate on the skyrocketing cost of legal work, exorbitant salaries for lawyers, whether judges should grade the lawyers who come before them and whether Congress intended some sort of bonus for lawyers who take on uncertain and sometimes unpopular civil rights cases.

Federal law allows those who prevail in such cases to recover their fees, and the judge in the case calculated those fees by multiplying what he thought were the reasonably expected billable hours by the prevailing hourly rate in Atlanta for such work, ranging from $215 an hour for the most junior associate to up to $495 for the most experienced partner.

But U.S. District Judge Marvin H. Shoob went further in awarding the bonus. He said the lawyers from the group Children's Rights and Atlanta's Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore law firm displayed a "higher degree of skill, commitment, dedication and professionalism" than he had seen during his time on the bench, and that in "58 years as a practicing attorney and federal judge, the court is unaware of any other case in which a plaintiff class has achieved such a favorable result on such a comprehensive scale."

The state of Georgia balked at paying the multimillion-dollar bonus, and said neither federal law nor Supreme Court precedent allowed such "enhancements."

Who Cares? Let's Find Out

2009-09-24T08:48:00.000-07:00

From Melanie Goodman:

I had a chance to hear leadership guru Margaret Wheatley in NH last week. It was a shot in the arm, a reminder why we do this work, and there were many take-aways. Given the tough job of providing resources to local communities from afar, which is afterall NEN’s modus operandi, it helped to be reminded that an assets approach to community work fights the impulse to create more rules and regulations, look for the perfect leader, and rely on outside experts (even though this last one contradicts NEN to some extent). Instead, the assets approach assumes:

· We have what we need
· Leaders are already here
· Every situation is workable
· Most people want to help others
· We have triumphed in much worse circumstances
· We can be fearless and bold; indeed we already have been

I also am a big fan of saying it straight, and resonated to many of these quotes Wheatley shared during her presentation:

“To get help, find the issue that people care about.” (vs. naming your issue and finding people to work it).

“To change the conversation, change who is in the conversation.” (I feel like we all get stuck here A LOT.)

“Don’t ask what’s wrong; ask what’s possible and who cares?” (In truth, I think we’re afraid to ask this question because maybe no one does care about the thing(s) we care about.)

“We don’t have an accountability problem; we have a caring problem.” (If we ‘care’ we’ll automatically be accountable? Really? Hmmm.)

But my personal favorite was:

“You can’t hate the person whose story you know.” I’m attempting to teach this very thing to my highly judgmental 12-year-old. No small feat.

So I went ahead and bought Wheatley’s new book, Finding Our Way. I may make it NEN’s next Virtual Book Group pick. Any joiners? I’m expecting to hear from all you Wheatley fans out there.

Heads Up: Income-Based Repayment Could Make a Serious Difference for Low-Paid Direct-Service Staff

2009-09-17T12:56:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago we ran an item in Into Practice, our e-newletter, about Income-Based Repayment, a new and much-needed strategy to make paying back student loans more affordable. I can't figure out why more people aren't excited about this. Could it be that they don't know about it?

From the IBR website:

Income-Based Repayment (IBR) is a new payment option for federal student loans. It can help borrowers keep their loan payments affordable with payment caps based on their income and family size. For most eligible borrowers, IBR loan payments will be less than 10 percent of their income - and even smaller for borrowers with low earnings. IBR will also forgive remaining debt, if any, after 25 years of qualifying payments.

There are also public-service loan forgiveness programs for which social service workers may be eligible after 10 years of payments and employment. Low-earning workers, social workers ... ring any bells?

The most important thing is that anyone can try to improve the terms of his or her loan, no matter when they borrowed. So IRB is highly relevant to direct-service workers, for instance, many of whom say they would stay in the field if not for student loans.

The IRB website has comprehensive information about repayment options, the loan forgiveness option including a repayment calculator, and links to webinars for more information. Link: http://www.ibrinfo.org/index.php

Another Piece Disappears

2009-09-08T07:45:00.001-07:00

Last week, in our regular e-newsletter, we published a short essay about the closing of OdysseyNH, a residential substance-abuse treatment center for adolescents in Hampton, NH. Here's what we said:

It was with sadness and and a sense of foreboding that we noted, here in New Hampshire, the death of OdysseyNH, an agency providing residential care to troubled adolescents. Odyssey House (later renamed OdysseyNH) opened its doors in 1970, and I first got to know it when I went to work as a local newspaper reporter here in the early '80s. Yet I'd never been inside til last October, when I was preparing a study on the condition of the children's mental health workforce in New Hampshire. It looked a lot like every agency. Maybe a little busier, more chaotic and noisy, but then, the agency's recovery school -- the only one in the state -- had just let out for the day, and vans were crowding the driveway. Some of the kids were headed off to a game somewhere, and shifts were changing. There was lots of laughing and high-fiving.

Things weren't particularly good at the agency -- I knew that -- but then, they weren't good anywhere. Censuses were down at residential programs throughout the state. I sat down with a program director and he told me the agency hadn't anticipated how rapidly funding for residential treatment would deteriorate. Odyssey was expert in treating youth with substance abuse and delinquency issues, and that's all they wanted to do; changing direction in some big and fundamental way clearly seemed almost impossible to them. I asked where the youth were going who used to be referred to Odyssey. The director shrugged and said he had no idea. This seemed incredible to me. He had to know, I thought. Surely, I suggested to him, a clear policy had been articulated at the state level on this transition away from residential treatment; a plan had been laid out and goals had been established. That way, agencies like Odyssey -- the ones who knew the most about troubled youth and what they needed -- would know what to expect and how to adjust. But my question must have struck him as naive, because he just looked at me and smiled.

I came back a couple of weeks later to interview nine front-line staffers. A veteran worker complained about low pay and high turnover, and said he was pushing for change. Younger workers told me they loved the kids but had to work second jobs to make ends meet. Lots of them were going back for advanced degrees; they liked the work, but the pay was killing them. Wht they really needed was a higher-level job, they figured. One staffer who had just finished her master's degree asked if there was anywhere in the state she could work where her student loans would be forgiven; anywhere at all, because she'd be willing to move there. I promised her I'd try to find out.

But despite the obvious stress they were under, the workers at Odyssey were pretty much like the workers at every other agency I spoke to: clear-eyed yet hopeful about their clients, and full of that spirit of jokey camaraderie so common among youthworkers. I liked them, and respected for them doing such a tough job. As we know, the marginalization of residential treatment is a big, complicated story -- one ultimately about economics and philosophy. Outcomes for youth will be similarly complicated. Right now, though, I'm pausing for this one, simple story. Goodbye, Odyssey.

A number of people responded to this article, thanking us for calling attention to the stresses that the field - and particularly residential services - are under. But we have two follow-up questions for our readers:1. In your community, where are the youth who are no longer being referred to your programs actually going? Are they simly being stepped down to a less intensive of care, and if so, what's happening to them there? 2. Given the current climate in the field, where are you seeing INCREASED demand for front-line staff, and where are you seeing DECREASED demand?