4.

Living Arrangement of Former VisionQuest
Clients After Discharge from Treatment. . . .

11

5.

Employment Status of Former VisionQuest
Residents After Discharge From Treatment. . .

13

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this report is to present the results of

a community follow-up study of former VisionQuest residents who were discharged from the programs operating in Pima and Cochise Counties. The study was conducted on residents who were in treatment a minimum of ten months. Generally, youth are referred to VisionQuest for a one-year period.

The follow-up was designed to obtain a variety of information. Of principal concern was the need to determine the extent to which youth discharged from VisionQuest would stay out of trouble with the law and would not require additional psychiatric services.

Youth in a residential treatment program live in a structured environment where the opportunities for recidivism are greatly reduced. Thus, measures related to recidivism, while in treatment, do not reflect a true recidivism rate. On the other hand, assessing changes related to the goals of therapy such as self-esteem, alienation, and self-concept are appropriate therapeutic outcome indicators while treatment is in progress.

Following treatment, the central interest shifts from assessing changes in individual attributes to assessing community adjustment. The question becomes: To what extent is the rehabilitated individual a fully functioning member of the community? Closely related is determining whether or not

the internal changes recorded during treatment have positive

behavioral consequences. In other words, to what extent is deviance reduced?

It has been clearly demonstrated, in past reports, that VisionQuest youth are "hard-core" delinquents.?

They enter

VisionQuest after a pattern of deviant behavior has been well

established. In addition, the average youth has failed in a variety of treatment alternatives. Given the "hard-core"

quality of the youth in VisionQuest, the question of recidivism becomes quite important. For one, the odds against complete

rehabilitation may be diminished among individuals with

established careers in deviancy.

With these concerns in mind, a follow-up study was implemented in January of 1979 among all former VisionQuest residents who were in treatment a minimum of ten months in either Pima or Cochise Counties.

Sample

Two hundred youth met the criteria for inclusion in the follow-up study. Over seventy-five percent of the sample was discharged from the Pima County program and the remainder were discharged from Cochise County. The youth in the sample had been discharged from periods ranging from three months to as long as five years. Because of the length of time since discharge, twenty-six percent of the cases could not be located. However, complete data were obtained on seventy-four percent of the youth; this represents one hundred and fortyeight cases.

Due to the variable length since discharge, the original cohort was divided into two subsamples: Those cases discharged one year or less and those cases discharged thirteen months or more. The average length since discharge for the latter group was 25.8 months; and for the former group, the average length since discharge was 6.5 months. In all, there were one hundred and three cases in the group that had been discharged for thirteen months or more and forty-five cases who had been discharged for one year or less. Dividing the sample in this way facilitates examining both short-term and longterm recidivism rates.

Methodology

A structured interview schedule was utilized to obtain the data. A copy of the questionnaire is included in this report 3 as Appendix A.

All of the data were collected by means of a telephone interview over a four-week period during January 1979. The data were obtained from the former VisionQuest residents themselves or a family member. Generally, this was a primary family member such as a mother, father, or grandparent. Among the group who left treatment one year or less, seventy-three percent of the respondents were the former VisionQuest residents themselves. Among the youth who were discharged thirteen months or more, only fifty-one percent of the respondents included the former VisionQuest resident.

The interviewers informed all respondents that the infor