Deb and I were discussing this one on the Carlbrook thread. It looks like they're desperately trying not to be evil...
When appropriate as determined by your child's treatment team, family conference calls can be used to begin the family healing process.
...but not really succeeding.
Dunno. The devil is in the details. They're not promising a cure-all, just soft to moderate issues.
I'd have to hear from someone who had been there about when the first time was that they saw their parents, whether they were free to say what they wanted, whether their parents were told to ignore their "lies and manipulation," whether the kid was escorted or knew in advance he was going.
What I've seen of "treatment teams" in normal, non-program treatment is that they include the parents as part of the team---I've never gone up against a treatment team firmly and not gotten my way. I pick my battles---I only become a ball-buster on the serious issues where I strongly disagree with their plan for handling something.
So what do they mean when they say treatment team?
In practice, how does it work out---does the kid see his parents a lot? Does the kid hear from his parents and communicate uncensored a lot?
They don't use the level system. It looks like they've worked hard to get licensed staff.
So what happens if a kid doesn't want to participate in a certain activity, like "primitive living"? Does he have to anyway?
I wouldn't send my kid there, but I'd sure want to hear specific details about how they behave
in practice before making a knee jerk decision.
This one is doing a better job of not sounding freaky, weird and cultish than the Programs we all know and hate.
I'm very, very hesitant to say this, but maybe they're not abusive?
I wouldn't want my kid to be the guinea pig for them developing a track record, but I'll be interested to see what kind of track record they build up.
Julie
