After 20 years of service to the community Parents For Youth was forced to close and is no longer able to provide group therapy services to parents of behaviourally challenged youth.
A number of our trained and experienced group leaders will continue to offer support groups for parents in their own practices and can be reached through this website and/or telephone. Currently there are 2 locations serving Toronto and its surrounding communities.
Meg Thompson will continue to provide parent support groups at the Anne Johnston Health Station at Yonge & Eglinton in Toronto. Meg can be contacted directly at 416-483-1538.
Victoria Young will continue to provide parent support groups at Hwy. 10 & Hurontario in Mississauga. Victoria can be reached directly at 416-251-7930.
Parents for Youth would like to take this opportunity to thank the many supporters of this group therapy programme. Together we have helped countless families bring about changes essential to the parents' and the youths' recovery
Our Training Manual was published despite our closure. Please feel free to download a copy here.
Sincerely,
Dr. Harvey Armstrong, M.D., F.R.C.P. (C)
Founder
Parents For Youth
THE HISTORY OF PARENTS FOR YOUTH: HELPING & SUPPORTING PARENTS
Parents for Youth emerged from Dr. Harvey Armstrong's realization, as senior staff member at the Family Court Clinic of the (former) Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, that there were many parents who were unable to cope with their difficult youth, and unable to find effective help in the available service systems. The parents were emotionally overwrought and overwhelmed by their child's determination to satisfy their own needs and to defy their parent's rules and expectations. The youth bullied, threatened and abused their parents. They dismissed the values that they knew were important to their parents, determined to live life as they chose, even to their own destruction. Their strategies of bludgeoning and seduction appeared to be working for them in their homes. They were the most powerful person in their families. Neither the youth or the parents were competent. The youth resisted the clinic's assessment or treatment, seeing any intervention as a threat to their power and their control of their parents and their resources.
The parents felt overwhelmed by the demands of the courts, our clinic, the schools and other agents. They were feeling a great deal of pain and were demoralized and exhausted from failed attempts to intervene in the lives of these charming, attractive youth, who were far less charming when they were threatened by the courts. The families had been assessed by other services and professionals, but the parents didn't feel that they or their youth had benefited from the help provided. Mental health services were interested in the parents as care givers responsible for their child's behaviours and often failed to recognize the negative impact of these behaviours on the parents. This served to undermine rather than strengthen the parents in their roles. It was essential to recognize that the parents were discouraged and in pain and needed to be supported and healed.
During the '70s, Dr. Armstrong, with the assistance of Pam Kernaghan MSW, Margaret Amerongen, MSW, and Dr. Raymond Morris, psychologist, began to work with some of the parents in groups. These parents were observed to be highly motivated to change the situation in the home, school and community. Immediate and positive changes were observed in the way the parents felt about themselves and in their effectiveness as parents. Expressing their pain to other parents who shared their experience, soon diminished their feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. The youths' attitudes and behaviours improved as the parents grew stronger and more confident. It became clear that empowering the parents to deal more effectively with anti-social behaviour in their children had the potential to decrease the behaviour and to stabilize the family system. The need for such groups soon grew beyond the capacity of a few individuals to provide the service.
The programme was continued at the Youthdale Psychiatric Crisis Service1 and at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. Contacts with the Kids' Phone Line and the Parent Help Line revealed that there were no services for parents beyond the boundaries of Metropolitan Toronto. Staff suggested that we train workers outside of the Metropolitan area, in order to create a referral base for parents in need. We provided education and training to staff of Kinark Child and Family services and to other mental health professionals throughout Ontario. We realized that the need of parents for such groups was greater than our ability to service them alone.
In 1988, after consultation with the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Armstrong incorporated a share capital corporation to provide a service to distraught parents. He invited other mental health professionals to train with him as group therapists. Interested professionals, using different approaches to working with families, visited the groups and witnessed the changes in the parents and the reported changes in their youth. Eventually, they were able to replicate these results in their own groups.
Our initial groups were led by Marlene Russell, Liam McEvoy, Susan Minor, Corinne Wilks, Meg Thompson, and Susan Copeland, later joined by Victoria Young, Peggy Grigor and Marie Adams.
Parents are referred primarily by family physicians, pediatricians, therapists, mental-health workers, police, Children's Aid societies, current or graduated group members, and other agencies. The groups meet weekly for sessions lasting one and one-half hours. There is a maximum of twelve parents per group, comprised of couples and single parents. The groups are openended, and the average length of stay is one year.
Our group therapy is reality based and the treatment model is patterned on Irving Yalom's interpersonal model of group psychotherapy. It also incorporates principles of William Glasser's Choice Theory. As well, concepts of the treatment of Attachment Disorder are adhered to in the groups.
