Boys Town

Boys Town is a family-style residential group home program for delinquent youths ages 10–18. Founded in 1917 by Father Edward Flanagan to help about a half dozen troubled boys, the residential program still operates at the original site located on 900 acres in West Omaha, Nebraska, and has expanded to several other sites across the country. Today there are more than a hundred long-term, residential-care homes for troubled youths, featuring family-style living in the least restrictive environment.

Boys Town applies a behavioral treatment model that emphasizes positive relationships, skill teaching, and self-control. The program is delivered through the Family Home Program, in which a married couple—trained to teach youths how to build positive relationships with others—lives with six to eight youths in a large domestic home. These couples are trained to use every opportunity to reinforce appropriate behavior and apply consequences to inappropriate behavior. The curriculum teaches specific social skills to develop thinking, feeling, and choice making needed to provide appropriate replacements for the inappropriate ways that the youths have learned to deal with difficult and stressful situations. Children stay in a residential home on average of 18 months.

The goal of this program is to provide abused, abandoned and neglected girls and boys with a safe, caring, loving environment where they gain confidence to get better and learn skills to become productive citizens.

The evaluation results indicate that Boys Town produces positive benefits for both boys and girls. Overall the outcome measures indicate that most youths improved from intake to discharge and were functioning at levels similar to national norms 3 months after discharge. The average CBCL scores improved from clinical or borderline range at intake to normal levels at discharge. The portion of youths with diagnosable psychiatric disorders decreased from more than 60 percent at intake to fewer than 25 percent 12 months later. Girls improved as much as boys on both DISC diagnoses and CBCL scores. Girls improved more than boys in perceived success at discharge and in the restrictiveness of their subsequent living situation, which were the only areas of differential improvement by gender. Finally, Boys Town discharged 80 percent of youths to either their family’s home or independent living.