School Safety Requires More Than Punishment
From the article:
Right now, about 1 in 5 children and adolescents ages 9 to 17 in the United States has a diagnosable mental-health disorder that impairs his or her life and, in any given year, 4 out of 5 young people with such disorders fail to receive the treatment they need.
For example, upon referral from the juvenile-justice system, Don was enrolled in multidimensional treatment foster care, or MTFC, which has been deemed a model program by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence (an organization affiliated with the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder).
MTFC is used as an alternative to putting youths in a group home or juvenile facility. It provides foster parents specially trained on how to positively guide children’s behavior, as well as ongoing supervision by a program case manager and frequent contact with teachers, work supervisors, and other adults in the child’s life. Originally developed by the Oregon Social Learning Center for young people in the juvenile-justice system, it has been shown to reduce arrests
and it returns nearly $5 in benefits for every dollar spent on it.
