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TEACHING FAMILY HOME
A teaching family home (TFH) is a long-term, residential facility for troubled youth, featuring a family teaching team in a family-style living environment. The family teaching team generally consists of a married couple who provide intervention strategies and create daily opportunities for teaching, learning, and skills-building.
The TFH model was originally developed in 1968 at the University of Kansas and was first implemented at Achievement Place, a community-based group home for juvenile offenders (Phillips et al., 1974). Since that time, the program has been modified and adapted to fit a variety of populations and settings, but the basic structure of the program remains unchanged.
Youths who enter the program are always subjected to a series of rigorous skills tests to determine their social, behavioral, and academic skills and deficits. Using this assessment tool as a guide, the teaching-family parents work to correct the youth's behavioral deficits with a highly structured system of rewards and punishments. Youths who apply themselves to their lessons and behave appropriately are rewarded with social approbation and a series of tokens that can be redeemed for special privileges (such as a night of television). Youths who misbehave or fail to meet required standards are awarded demerits and lose privileges. As youths progress through the system, they are rewarded with greater autonomy and less-structured routines. In addition, everyone in the program participates in the home's "self-government"-assisting in the development of family rules and the arbitration of peer disputes (Ohio Teaching Family Association [OFTA], 2003).
Since its introduction in the 1960s, the teaching family home model has been reproduced at numerous group homes, including Boys Town, where it was successfully replicated in the 1970s (Fixsen and Blasé, 2002). According to one study, more than 5,000 children, families, and adults with special needs currently participate in TFH-style programs every day (OFTA, 2003).
Although the long-term impact of TFHs on juvenile recidivism has never been clearly demonstrated, their short-term positive impact on youths' social skills, peer relations, and academic performance is well documented in numerous studies (Lipsey, 2000; Kirigin, 1982; Levitt, 1981).
Much of the success of the program is attributed to its tremendous emphasis on highly skilled service providers. Teaching Family parents must undergo a formal, 12-month training process to qualify as TFH practitioners. They must also undergo a rigorous review process and be recertified by the Teaching Family Association every year.