Mandating insight
The New York City Administration for Children's Services is going stark raving mad. Even though my child is not involved in that system, I do discuss several ACS cases every week in the course of my day job, and I've run across not a few situations where ACS wants to mandate psychotherapy -- not for the child, but for a parent.
As a mental health clinician who at one time invested significant amounts of time and money in his own therapy and personal growth, I find the trend disturbing and a bit ridiculous. The whole reason someone presents himself for therapy is because he or she is dissatisfied with his life and has enough insight to understand that at least part of the solution lies with him. When the source of motivation comes from outside one's self, I don't think it's too much of an overstatement to say that a psychotherapy patient is going to be wasting both his and his therapist's time. I don't believe that self-understanding can be mandated. Hell, I don't even believe that individuals should be telling other people they need to do therapy, let alone institutions.
So what's with ACS telling parents that they need professional mental health services as a way to become good enough parents?
It probably has a little to do with that part of ACS' mission statement that says that the agency "Helps families in need through counseling, referrals to drug rehabilitation programs and other preventive services." But it probably has even more to do with the declining caseloads documented on the agency's website, and with the need for ACS to more intensively manage those remaining cases in order to justify budgetary and staffing levels which will stay high in spite of the agency's "downsizing" efforts.
It's well-known that ACS doesn't even attempt to monitor someone's actual progress in treatment, particularly when the it's a mental health and not a substance abuse problem. So what they end up doing is trying to find out simply whether a parent (usually a father) is coming. He could be talking with his therapist about sports, he could be using the sessions to rant against his ex, or he could be coming in and simply warming a chair and not saying anything at all -- but hey, as long as he's coming, and his insurance is being billed, that's all that matters.
Hell, as long as ACS is in the business of improving families' lives, maybe they can expand their mission to include the following:
Anyone else have any other ideas about how ACS could expand their mission to improve the lives of families?
As a mental health clinician who at one time invested significant amounts of time and money in his own therapy and personal growth, I find the trend disturbing and a bit ridiculous. The whole reason someone presents himself for therapy is because he or she is dissatisfied with his life and has enough insight to understand that at least part of the solution lies with him. When the source of motivation comes from outside one's self, I don't think it's too much of an overstatement to say that a psychotherapy patient is going to be wasting both his and his therapist's time. I don't believe that self-understanding can be mandated. Hell, I don't even believe that individuals should be telling other people they need to do therapy, let alone institutions.
So what's with ACS telling parents that they need professional mental health services as a way to become good enough parents?
It probably has a little to do with that part of ACS' mission statement that says that the agency "Helps families in need through counseling, referrals to drug rehabilitation programs and other preventive services." But it probably has even more to do with the declining caseloads documented on the agency's website, and with the need for ACS to more intensively manage those remaining cases in order to justify budgetary and staffing levels which will stay high in spite of the agency's "downsizing" efforts.
It's well-known that ACS doesn't even attempt to monitor someone's actual progress in treatment, particularly when the it's a mental health and not a substance abuse problem. So what they end up doing is trying to find out simply whether a parent (usually a father) is coming. He could be talking with his therapist about sports, he could be using the sessions to rant against his ex, or he could be coming in and simply warming a chair and not saying anything at all -- but hey, as long as he's coming, and his insurance is being billed, that's all that matters.
Hell, as long as ACS is in the business of improving families' lives, maybe they can expand their mission to include the following:
- Requiring custodial parents to keep their kids out of fast-food restaurants.This will result in fewer obese kids, decreased visits to the doctor, and long-term savings in health care costs over the child's lifetime. Rates of high blood pressure, heart problems, and other diseases associated with obesity will plummet.
- Mandating custodial and noncustodial parents to quit smoking. The nasty effects of secondhand smoke are well documented, but even if a parent doesn't smoke around the kids, you never know. As a parent, I hate seeing other parents smoke around their kids, especially around younger ones. Why take chances with our children's health? ACS should mandate smoking cessation programs for parents as a condition for reunification with their kids. After all, if you don't care about your kids enough to want to keep their lungs healthy, you don't deserve to have kids.
- Proficiency exams in the grade your child is in, to make sure you can help your child with his or her homework. New York City instituted profiency tests for the third grade two years ago, but why stop at the kids? If you can't help your children with their homework, you're too stupid to have kids and don't deserve their custody. Failure in any one of the required proficiency areas should result in temporary loss of custody, followed by a probationary period during which you would be allowed to take the test again.
- Mandatory inpatient codependency treatment for custodial mothers who repeatedly get involved with abusive boyfriends. If you can't help yourself from getting involved with men who hit you, it's a medical emergency and you need to go to the hospital to get to the bottom of your self-destructive need to be battered by nasty men. Your child, of course, will wind up in foster care while you're in treatment. But don't worry -- ACS will monitor your progress in treatment, and will reward compliance with reunification sometime before the kids turn 21. Note: The above guideline applies only to custodial mothers. Women who batter their boyfriends don't exist, so if you're a man in that situation, you'd better just keep quiet about it.
Anyone else have any other ideas about how ACS could expand their mission to improve the lives of families?
posted by BreadBreaker at 11:37 AM
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