THE AUGUST
AICHHORN CENTER
for
ADOLESCENT RESIDENTIAL CARE, Inc.
our programs
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An Introduction -- Who We Are and What's In This Site
Welcome to the home page of the August Aichhorn
Center. The Aichhorn Center was organized as a
not-for-profit corporation in New York State in 1977 to serve, to
study and to teach about the special problems of providing
long-term care and treatment to teenagers who were "unplaceable"
in any existing facilities except State hospitals or correctional
institutions. The Center opened a 32-bed RTF in Manhattan in
May, 1991, and a second 24-bed RTF in Brooklyn, serving teenagers in custody in the
juvenile justice system, in June, 2012. On April 30, 2020,
the New York State Office of Mental Health closed both
programs.
For more information about various aspects of these programs,
please go to our programs.
With the end of our direct service efforts, the Center is now
moving to address its broader purposes, undertaking to study and
teach about the field of residential treatment in order to develop
improved operating programs.. How do programs like ours
work? Are they useful or harmful? Are they effective
enough to justify the costs? These are the questions we now
seek to answer, using our three decades of experience in operating
programs as the basis for defining and evaluating a program model
that addresses the needs of very seriously deprived and impaired
adolescents for whom long-term care appears to be the only
practical safe and effective approach.
We will report here on the progress of these efforts as they
proceed. Our first short working paper addresses the
restrictiveness of placements just prior to and just after
admission to our programs. You can review it here.
LINKS -- Aichhorn as others have seen us
New York Magazine ran a brief article on the Aichhorn
Center and our RTF in June, 1999.
NY Magazine
Dr. Michael Pawel, Aichhorn's Executive Director, questioned a
review entitled "Killer Children," in a letter published by The
New York Review in December, 1999.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/288
Fox Butterfield, discussing mentally ill teenagers in the
juvenile justice system, referred to the Aichhorn Center in his New York Times article of December 5, 2000.
NY Times
The unexamined psychological issues fueling widespread political
disapproval of all group child care are discussed in an essay from
by Dr. Pawel published in The Humanist. [Note: downloading
this item costs $2.95.]
The Humanist
Dr. Pawel reviews a description of the Broward County Mental
Health Court, suggesting that it seems to represent the criminal
justice system's recognition that many chronic psychiatric
patients will not be treated by the mental health
system. The
Forensic
Echo .
Child Welfare Watch,
Summer, 2009, in a longer article about the difficulties of
securing long-term psychiatric care for very disturbed children in
the foster care system, includes photos of an alumni reunion, and
a discussion of the Aichhorn RTF's outcome study. See
"A
Revolving
Door
of
Care,"
page
20
of the pdf file.
The background of an RTF resident forms the basis for an extended
discussion of the scarcity of resources for mentally ill teenagers
in the juvenile justice system in the Fall, 2009 issue of Child Welfare Watch. See
"Where
the
Sick
Get
Sicker,"
page
5
of the pdf file.
Another former resident was interviewed in the NY
Times neighborhood section.
In 2011, Child Welfare Watch outlined plans for the
RTF-Brooklyn. click
here . Kendra Hurley followed up a year later when
the facility opened. click
here
[revised 11/1/23]