tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780876072481932881.post5641775763884238877..comments2023-08-24T02:34:19.991-04:00Comments on Jillie's Take!: "EDUCATIONAL CONSULTANTS FOR DUMMIES": REFERRALS OF EDUCATIONAL CONSULTANTS TO ABUSIVE RESIDENTIAL TEEN PROGRAMS THAT USE NON-EVIDENCE BASED THERAPYJilliestakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06118407451509419508noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780876072481932881.post-65428303373217409132014-06-20T14:03:19.890-04:002014-06-20T14:03:19.890-04:00I just don't understand how so many believe th...I just don't understand how so many believe that isolation and torment if not down right sadistic abuse can be beneficial for a child.<br />The use of kidnappers (teen transporters) is appalling and must be made illegal like in every other civilized country. How could you do that to your child ? <br />This level of institutional child abuse is America is truly a stain on it's human rights record.<br />Brutality just doesn't work and needs to be stopped.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17231928636110856136noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780876072481932881.post-30355832363792502012013-12-16T11:18:31.540-05:002013-12-16T11:18:31.540-05:00http://www.guardianadlitem.org/Practice_Manual_fil...http://www.guardianadlitem.org/Practice_Manual_files/PDFs/Ch16_INTERSTATE_COMPACT_ON_THE_PLACEMENT_OF_CHILDREN.pdfJilliestakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06118407451509419508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780876072481932881.post-35478984976414546502013-12-16T11:07:35.878-05:002013-12-16T11:07:35.878-05:00http://centerforchildwelfare2.fmhi.usf.edu/kb/icpc...http://centerforchildwelfare2.fmhi.usf.edu/kb/icpc/ASPHA%20Summary%20of%20Revisions.pdfJilliestakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06118407451509419508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780876072481932881.post-3153385892285581322013-12-10T23:09:25.252-05:002013-12-10T23:09:25.252-05:00Every parent considering a placement in a Wilderne...Every parent considering a placement in a Wilderness, TBS, or RTC should watch all the videos of Sen George Miller's congressional hearing on the industry.<br />Positive change in the industry appears to be lip service, as reports continue to come in citing abuse, neglect, needless injury and death. Yes, one should weigh the odds, very carefully. About 175 children have lost their lives. And everyone of them could've been prevented. That does not include the untold number of suicide and drug deaths, post-program.<br /><br />The Congressional Hearing Videos begin here:<br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgBIqMnZ97I<br /><br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780876072481932881.post-71479505717424746602013-12-10T22:09:34.430-05:002013-12-10T22:09:34.430-05:00First, I am not a shill; I post under my real nam...First, I am not a shill; I post under my real name.<br /><br />Second, thank you Jillie for allowing an alternative point of view to be expressed.<br /><br />For any parent dealing with a child in trouble, there are no easy answers. In the end, we all want our child to grow up safely, develop good character, and be able to lead a productive life as an adult. When your child takes a bad turn (or a series of bad turns) while still in high school, what do you do?<br /><br />Here is my experience. First, my wife and I worked with the high school and their counselors. Then we got our son counseling with a local PhD therapist. We tried to stay connected with him at home. With all this, his trajectory accelerated in the wrong direction.<br /><br />My wife arrived at the conclusion sooner than I did that we had to change the setting if our son stood a chance to make positive changes. The school counselor suggested that we send him to live out of the area with a relative, but this suggestion was self-serving – just a way to get his case off her list.<br /><br />After much angst on my part, I agreed with my wife that we needed to send him away to get the kind of help that he was not getting at the local high school. He needed to get away from the kids who hung out after school at the convenience store and experimented with new drugs. He needed a wakeup call that would never be heard at home. <br /><br />The day he left home was the most painful day of my life. No parent sends a child to wilderness or TBS without similar feelings. "Anonymous" does not indicate if he/she is a parent, but references a death in a WTP to a person close to him/her. Is “Anonymous” aware of any drug related deaths in the local community? Yes, there have been deaths in wilderness therapy or boot camp programs, but there are thousands of teen deaths each year from drug overdoses. Any teen death is a terrible loss, but parents need to weigh the risks of letting a teen progress into addictive drugs like heroine and risk death by OD vs. placing a child in a setting where there are no drugs.<br /><br />The point of my original posting is that there are good WTP and TBS programs that can help troubled teens. My son had an amazing counselor in the wilderness that helped him start the process of self-examination which is a prerequisite to fundamental change. At TBS, he has another great counselor who is helping him build on the work he started in the wilderness. Change does not happen quickly, and there is no guarantee from any program that change will be permanent. It has taken me months of struggle to understand that in the end, my son will decide for himself which way to go in life. Is he being brainwashed at TBS, or was he brainwashed at the convenience store by kids who modeled behavior that drugs were cool and a ticket to acceptance? As a parent, I had to choose. <br /><br />Anyone reading this far either has an axe to grind or is looking for help in deciding if WT or TBS has validity in helping a troubled teen. I found the Wikipedia article on “wilderness therapy” to present a good description of wilderness therapy and a comparison to boot camps. It says:<br />“One of the major differences between boot camps and wilderness therapy is the underlying philosophical assumptions (wilderness therapy being driven by the philosophy of experiential education and theories of psychology and boot camps being informed by a military model). Additionally, most wilderness therapy programs have highly trained clinical staff either on the expedition or in active and ongoing consultation with the team. Boot camps may have no clinically trained staff working in the programs.”<br /><br />I agree with “Anonymous” who says “it is extremely important that parents do due diligence”. Our point of disagreement is that I feel local services are not always up to the job of making “real change happen”. Not having my son at home has been an incredible loss. I have accepted this temporary loss as a tradeoff to the real possibility of not having him at home in the future because of drug use or jail.<br />Paul McDonaldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16653075100982692434noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780876072481932881.post-46828406755579108912013-12-10T13:13:12.115-05:002013-12-10T13:13:12.115-05:00Pardon me if I'm wrong, but you sound more lik...Pardon me if I'm wrong, but you sound more like a shill than I a parent. Bad stories have been consistent and have increased with access to the internet.<br /><br />Parents are free to choose the option that feels right for them, but they should have accurate information when doing so. Jillie does an excellent job of providing concerns for parents to consider.<br /><br />If you are a parent, I hope your son is getting real help. My personal experience - with 2 people close to me attending programs- is this:<br />One died needlessly in a Wilderness program when he was made to sit in 100+* temps because the staff believed he was faking.<br />The other attended wilderness and a TBS for two years. Did not take drugs before attending. Developed substance issues post program and had to employ a therapist to undo the abusive brainwashing he endured at the TBS.<br /><br />Odds are good that your son may be learning how to 'act' as told to. After all, this is the 'Teen Behavior Modification' industry. The majority (perhaps all) do not use evidence-based therapeutic techniques. Many teens have had worse issues post-program and/or committed suicide.<br /><br />It is extremely important that parents do due diligence, and if at all possible, find local services that will work with the whole family. That is how real change happens.<br /><br />Jillie, unfortunately, the ICPC no longer applies to programs and mental health facilities due to the efforts of Robin Arnold-Williams. Not that it was even employed to any significant degree.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780876072481932881.post-20654014825827230782013-12-10T06:52:55.491-05:002013-12-10T06:52:55.491-05:00Jillie presents a view that removing a child from ...Jillie presents a view that removing a child from home and sending him/her to wilderness therapy or therapeutic boarding school (TBS) is a big mistake. I disagree. My son went to wilderness in Georgia and says "it was the best experience of my life". He is currently in TBS and continues to make progress on the emotional issues that disrupted his life and that of his family members. Keeping him in his old environment (our local town) would not have created a setting that was conducive to change. At age 17, he needed to make a lot of changes and was running out of time to make them. Already in trouble with the law, our son would have continued on the same track and gotten into real trouble at age 18.<br /><br />Jillie - this is a test to you. Do you permit the opposing view to be voiced on your site, or will you purge my post? I agree that any industry can have problems. Much of the bad stories you read on the internet are based on what happened ten or more years ago before many of the facilities adopted proper clinical practices for helping these kids.Paul McDonaldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16653075100982692434noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780876072481932881.post-14451873563073680012012-12-18T07:28:06.460-05:002012-12-18T07:28:06.460-05:00I would like to add, as someone who attended one o...I would like to add, as someone who attended one of these facilities in the 80's that back then they did not use any actual psychologists or therapists. The staff tended to be high school grads or even dropouts, and an occasional staff might have held a degree in liberal arts. <br /><br />Later, in the 90's, as lawsuits began, programs started hiring a licensed psychologist, but generally only one, and this person was located off-campus. Maybe once a month your child would get sent, along with probably a dozen other students, to see the psychologist who would make recommendations that obviously would align with the program. The children would then return to a program run by unlicensed, untrained staff for the remaining of the month. <br /><br />Each program usually has a one-size-fits-all method, and nothing that psychologist says or does will change what your child experiences. There is also, quite often, a cult of personality centered on the founder, and in many cases this founder simply worked at a program long enough to figure out it is a huge moneymaker, and then started their own residential treatment program, etc. <br /><br />In my day, the head cook became power staff, eventually marrying into the family of the founder. Many kitchen staff were promoted to staff, dishing out psychotherapy to students. Bounty hunters whom parents hire to escort their children to these programs would branch off to start their own programs. We had a lumberjack go from staff to power staff to running his own facility. We saw staff turn bounty hunters. None had any qualifications to do any of this work. And today, many of them are still in the industry.<br /><br />And they feed off each other. As long as you know the people involved, you can get beds filled at your new program, or get referrals for bounty hunting work. Lose a job here, get hired over there. This is very incestuous industry. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780876072481932881.post-7631389121042553062012-04-29T15:39:21.577-04:002012-04-29T15:39:21.577-04:00Good reading for all parents and those who care ab...Good reading for all parents and those who care about our future, which is our kids.<br /><br />Thanks for putting this all together. The suffering of your child, your family, and yourself endure, helps society when you get this out to the world.Distressed Americannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780876072481932881.post-25430992369493335962012-02-01T01:13:56.312-05:002012-02-01T01:13:56.312-05:00Fantastic post, Jillie. I've posted it to redd...Fantastic post, Jillie. I've posted it to reddit & facebook, and added it to our list of resources for parents: http://www.reddit.com/r/troubledteens/comments/ooomq/whats_a_parent_to_do_resources_for_parents_of/<br /><br />Great work, thanks for putting this together.Reddithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15130000068263964581noreply@blogger.com