Running Away from an Adolescent Residential Treatment Facility: Does Adult Involvement Make a Difference?

This paper focuses on whether running away from adolescent residential care facilities is related to having off grounds passes with an adult resource. It is hypothesized that as off grounds passes increase in frequency and duration, runaway behavior will decrease in frequency and duration. Data were collected from two hundred closed client files. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences was used for finding Spearman’s rho correlation and linear regression analysis of the variables. Results show a weak negative relationship exists between number of passes and both number of runaway occurrences and hours spent on the run. Because data are collected from one agency, results should not be generalized to practice and policy making outside the study agency.