So your teenage son or daughter is in trouble. The next step looks like being time spent in a residential facility for troubled teens. You may have no say in that decision. Without the therapy in a residential facility, your teen may be off to hospital or to jail. But take heart that most residential facilities are determined to help your teen and get them back on the road to recovery.
But, and this is a big but, you as the parent do have a say as to which particular residential facility your teen will attend. And the way to make the right decision is to run a check on prospective facilities. You do the sleuthing.
Here’s a tip. Don’t just accept the word of the facility because some have been found to make false claims or at best to give misleading information. Check with another authority. For example, take accreditation. The facility may tell you they have state approval to operate but ask the state authority. Then there is a serious of questions you can ask together with some follow up questions to the answers provided.
What are the qualifications of the staff? Now that is a logical question but you need extra information such as where they trained and how much experience they have. They are excellent follow up questions. Then you need to know other important things. What type of therapy is provided, is it on an individual or group basis and can the residents continue with their academic studies while in residence?
You see if your child is removed from their normal schooling and placed in a residential facility, their academic progress may suffer. That is understandable in that their health is a top priority. But is it possible to combine their therapy with some academic studies? And if so will those subjects be counted as part of their regular school studies once they leave the facility.
Another good example of a question with a follow up question concerns checks on the staff. If you ask the facility if they carry out checks on the background of their staff and the answer is ‘yes’, you should then ask, “Who conducts the checks?” It is not enough to get one answer. The health and recovery of your troubled teen is too important. They deserve and need the best staff, the best programs in the best facility.
Another important fact will give you an idea about how serious the facility is in treating their patients. Does the facility accept every applicant? You see there are big differences in the condition of troubled teens. Some have serious health problems both physical and mental. Some may be a danger to themselves and to others. Taking any and every troubled teen may not give every resident the best chance of recovery.
As you can see, not all residential facilities are the same; their standard of content and care may vary. As the parent it is your responsibility to investigate the quality of various facilities and choose the one which will best help your teen.
If you need tips and advice about residential treatment programs visit Adolescent Residential Treatment or to get help now click here.
Great article and good advice. Here is a real life example of what can go wrong it you put your child in the wrong program. We originally sent our son to Gateway Academy in Salt Lake City, Utah and had a terrible experience. We were concerned that Gateway Academy could not handle a boy with our son’s issues (BPD traits) but they assured us that they could. Ten weeks later, they kicked him out of the program and abandoned him and us (his parents). They indicated that they didn’t he would still be having these BPD behavioral issues ten weeks into the program and couldn’t work with him. If we had known he was only on a ten week trial program we certainly wouldn’t have sent him to Gateway.
Not only did they kick him out but they abandoned him with no support leaving us to scramble to find another placement ASAP. He had a bad weekend and they took him to the emergency room to admit him to the hospital psych ward because they couldn’t handle him. Then they called us up and said they wouldn’t take him back and we needed to figure out where to send him. We live across the country and so we scrambled to find him alternatives, toured those alternatives and transferred him after about a week. When we picked our son up at the hospital we were shocked to find that they didn’t even bring him a change of clothes or his glasses for the week he was in the psych ward. They didn’t even call to consult with the Dr. to see how he was or if they could give some input. They offered no help to us in figuring out the next placement for our son.
This may be cynical but Gateway admitted our son when they had a lot of open beds and kicked him out when they were pretty full. Also, you would think they would at least compensate us for the extra expense we incurred to scramble to find him another placement plus part of the cost of the psych ward since he calmed down right away and the psych ward was just expensive baby sitting for the week. No…they didn’t refund a dime beyond our deposit. They stuffed his dirty clothes in his bags, had us pick them up and said good riddance. The management at Gateway Academy does not appear to care much about the kids they care for – at least not once they kick them out and stop getting paid.
So, follow the suggestions above and do your research so you don’t have an experience like we had at Gateway Academy.