Common Difficulties Faced by Troubled Teens in Group Homes

Group homes provide a structured environment where troubled teens receive counseling, skill-building activities and a nurturing environment. However, grouping troubled teens has certain inherent problems. Teens in group homes often come from backgrounds in which they were emotionally, physically and/or sexually abused. They have suffered deprivation, lack of nurturing and warmth, and they have known little structure. While this is not true for all teens who enter group homes, this is the usual profile of a group home teen resident. Teens who enter into group home living face many difficulties.

Learning New Bad Habits

• Teens bring many experiences with them when they are placed in group homes, and they bring many negative coping skills. In the group home setting, teens learn additional negative behaviors from their housemates. Adolescence is the time of life when individuals naturally begin to loosen the strings that attach them to caregivers and their peer groups take on greater significance. In the group home setting where most of the teens suffer from self-esteem issues and lack strong bonds to positive role models, peer pressure has an even greater effect.

Adjustment Issues

• The group home experience is quite foreign to a teenage group home resident. Troubled teens are known for breaking or ignoring rules. In the group home there are rules and routines. Teens are faced with expectations for behavior that is totally unfamiliar to them. According to Donna Davis, the program manager for a community support agency, "Teens are not prepared for keeping a schedule. It takes a while before they learn that there are consequences for not following the rules." Behavior Modification techniques are commonly used for helping teens learn to follow rules.

Staff Characteristics

• Trust and consistency are two characteristics that may not be common to the teenage group home resident. Therefore, staff characteristics are highly important. Teens face difficulties when they do not relate to at least one staff member on a significant level. Moreover, frequent staff turnover leads to feelings of loss or even abandonment. Teenage group home residents often are manipulative and test those skills on staff members. Staff qualifications include the ability to relate to teens and maintain the standards of the group home at the same time.

Lack of Natural Supports

• Teens who age out of group homes often go back to the homes of their parents or other blood relatives. Unfortunately for most of these teens, there is no safe harbor in the homes of their childhood. The conditions that led to the removal of the teen from the home often are still present. Frequently, these homes are supported by limited resources that make no room for one more dependent. Facing such conditions at a vulnerable age, teens are plunged into the adult world without natural supports during this fledgling period of their lives. Stress and bad choices too often lead to mental health problems and/or legal difficulties.