The sixth principle of the Child and Adolescent Service System Program principles is that service selection must be: Least restrictive/least intrusive: Services take place in settings that are the most appropriate and natural for the child and family and are the least restrictive and intrusive available to meet the needs of the child and family.
If we look at this from a trauma informed perspective, it comes down to control over one’s own choices. Here are two important considerations:
If a child has a significant ACES Score, they have experienced some type of loss of control over their environment and the choices they can make in that environment. Abuse of any type (physical, sexual, emotional) is largely driven by the abusers ‘need’ to control the person being abused. Even then, compliance doesn’t necessarily make the abuse stop. A person enduring abuse is a person enduring an extreme form of ‘other’ control. Children coming out of abusive environments may have some temporary relief being away from their abuser, but if they are placed in a restrictive system (behavior program, institutional setting with ‘levels’, places with ‘zero tolerance policies, etc.), control still occurs and the flight / fight / freeze response is activated. We call it: “behavior.”
Taking a child from an abusive household and putting them in a place where there are restrictive rules may be ‘safer’ by degree, but it will not help the problem. In fact – it puts it on a figurative ‘slow cooker’ where things may not be coming to a visible boil, but there’s still further damage being done.
Secondly: Good choices come from practice making choices in the least restrictive setting. Making choices is a skill just like any other. You get better with practice. If you grow up in a system where choices arbitrarily labelled "bad" are punished with zero tolerance or the strict over-correction of having the opportunity for choice removed - you don't get to practice. As a result - more than anything else, you will learn self-doubt. (Or worse – impulsively blind over-confidence.) Poor choices are learning opportunities. Poor choices are not free from consequences. When the prevention of mistakes becomes more important than the learning opportunities presented by mistakes, choices will become forced and distorted. Mistakes and their natural consequences are imperative in developing the skill of making sound choices.
How many kids do we have that come out of the service system end up in the criminal justice system or living in poverty? Why do they end up there?
It’s not control that will help kids feel better – and learn to make better choices. It’s deeper than that. Rules don’t necessarily make for a ‘better’ society, though they make for a more orderly one (at least on the surface). The times in my life where I made my worst choices, it wasn’t the rules that saved me – it was love.
But then - that’s a whole other blog post . . . .
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