Termination of long term treatment in a residential home: quotas, conditions and additional comments

The method of discharge of 235 children from a pedagogic-psychotherapeutic children's home between 1968 and 1987 was examined. The centre of interest were the terminations by the parents (13% of all discharges) and those brought about by the home itself (8%). The latter were partly those falsely admitted, some of these developed complications during a later stage in the treatment. The results indicate that the terminations by the parents were independent of age on admission, sex of the child and the type of disturbance involved. It was, however, noticible that parents of children with autistic disturbances and multiple partial performance deficiencies did not require early termination. An increase in parental termination was shown where individual limitations of parent-child contact were implemented. Terminations by the home showed a systematic relationship to certain contraindications to institutionalized conditions of treatment. The introduction of parental participation in particular lead to a dramatic decrease in the total of all terminations.