Renowned Psychotherapist Praises Casa Pacifica Staff, Progress

On average, an abused or neglected child arrives at Casa Pacifica every day.

About half have just been taken away from troubled parents. The others have bounced from foster home to foster home, behaving so badly that no one can handle them anymore. All are children in despair.

During a series of Casa Pacifica staff seminars Wednesday, noted psychologist Don Meichenbaum made it clear that not all the children who pass through the gates of the peaceful Camarillo campus will recover from that despair.

But as the shelter nears its second anniversary next month, Meichenbaum praised the work being done at Casa Pacifica and urged staff members to keep improving children’s chances by helping them find special skills.

“They have to find something that is going to save them,” Meichenbaum said. “Look at [Dennis] Rodman. If Rodman wasn’t the greatest rebounder in basketball, then nobody would tolerate him.”

He likened the teachers’ search for promise in the troubled children--who range from infants to age 17--to that of middle-class parents who shuttle vanloads of kids to after-school activities, looking for something their children like and are good at.

“These parents, they say, ‘We’re going to keep driving until we find something you can do well,’ ” Meichenbaum said. “Well, these kids here don’t have parents to shop them around. You have to shop them around.”

Meichenbaum is on the faculty at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. Voted one of the most influential psychotherapists of the century by the journal American Psychologist, Meichenbaum has speaking engagements all over the world. He said he has counseled children in Bosnia, rape victims in Kuwait and families victimized by the Chernobyl disaster. But Casa Pacifica, a shelter he has visited four times in the two years since it opened, is a particularly special place, he said.

“They are dealing here with kids that have been failures in many other populations,” he said. “This is really the end of the mill.

“They have a terrific facility, a dedicated staff and a commitment to the kids and to self-evaluation,” Meichenbaum added.

Along with psychiatrists from UCLA, Meichenbaum is gathering data on Casa Pacifica for a study on post-traumatic stress disorder and childhood behavior modification. Since the shelter opened in July 1994, about 700 children have come to its stunning grounds in the shadow of the Santa Monica Mountains, said executive director Steven Elson.

Though figures aren’t available yet to judge Casa Pacifica’s second year of operation, Elson said results from the first year were extremely encouraging. Before the shelter opened, about 11% of the children from abusive or neglected home situations who were placed in foster homes were cared for and eventually allowed to return to their parents. After Casa Pacifica’s first year, 29% of the children sheltered there had been returned to their parents, making both the staff and their young charges happy.

“These kids just want to go home,” Elson said.