NCJ Number
209922
Journal
Journal of Child Sexual Abuse Volume: 13 Issue: 3/4 Dated: 2004 Pages: 245-255
Date Published
2004
Length
11 pages
Annotation
Information on various aspects of operating a residential treatment facility for juvenile sexual offenders was obtained from 49 usable questionnaires returned out of 203 sent to these types of facilities in the United States.
Abstract
Items on the questionnaire addressed major aspects of operating a residential program, including number of beds, average daily population, number of males and females in treatment, testing and assessment procedures, most frequent diagnoses, average IQ of residents, abuse history, therapeutic approaches used, number and types of individual/group treatment sessions per week, qualifications of therapists, average length of treatment, and follow-up research on treatment. Over half of the programs used psychological testing for the assessment of new patients. Intelligence testing was most common, followed by personality testing. There was general consensus on the effectiveness of cognitive and behavioral treatment models. Group therapy was the most common type of therapy, although individual therapy was offered, especially in mental health facilities compared to facilities in correctional settings. Most of the facilities were apparently providing adequate safety for residents; however, some facilities reported unacceptable levels of sexual incidents and assault. Although 78 percent of the programs attempted to follow up patients after discharge, the scarcity of published data on this feature suggests that it was not a well-developed component of most programs. Follow-up data must be obtained and correlated with assessment and treatment characteristics in order to determine what does and does not work. 3 tables and 15 references