A Social Integration Model

The mission of Maple Star is to assist young people to achieve social integration and prepare them to live in a democratic society by serving as an alternative to institutional care and providing opportunities to live in family settings.

This mission will be accomplished to the extent that we can assist young people in our care to move towards the following outcome goals necessary for adult living in a democratic society. As an adult the person will:

  1. Work and be self-supporting
  2. Actively participate in the community, including voluntary associations, recreational interest groups, religious organizations, or other community organizations, and includes contributing to the benefit of the overall community
  3. Respect the rights of other, appreciate difference, and avoid victimizing others through illegal behavior
  4. Live in a family or other intimate relationship where one gives and takes emotional support
  5. Manage personal and household matters including budgets, cleaning, shopping, cooking, and laundry
  6. Accept responsibility for one's own behavior including taking steps to make amends for mistakes and omissions

These are long term outcome goals. Maple Star services will contribute to assisting young people to accomplish these goals. Youths who emancipate from Maple Star programs into interdependent adult living will be relatively skillful in all of these areas. Youth who are discharged to some permanency plan other than emancipation should be further along towards accomplishing these outcomes than when they came into the Maple Star program but they cannot be expected to have sufficient skills to fully accomplish the goals.

Maple Star holds two intermediate goals for serving youth placed in Maple Star families.

  1. Enhancing the probability of a stable placement and
  2. Enhancing the probability of personal growth

These goals can best be accomplished by focusing on the integration of young persons into families, neighborhoods, and networks of social relationships in the larger community. Young people should not be segregated and isolated from communities. They should not be dealt with as passive and dependent but, instead, as active and responsible members of the service team. Surrounding young people with professionals paid to provide various services to them could have the effect of isolating the young people from peers, neighbors, families, and the social networks making up communities.