Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Facility Question and Answers

Unita Academy, Wellsville, UT

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DannyB II:

--- Quote from: "Pile of Dead Kids" ---Alternatively, if you were less of a malevolent bitch she might not have had any problems in the first place.
--- End quote ---
 

Here is are Poster Child, Pile, abusing another mother. Please do tell this mother and the community here, just what is your problem, today. Well lets say you did.

"C A Mom", I would not take what this disturbed poster has said, seriously. This particular poster enjoys bouncing from post to post that mothers have written and antagonizing them. Just let his berating roll off your back.

Thank you for posting and please find the time to come back. We would like to hear more.

DannyB II:

--- Quote from: "oldest" ---I am responding to the site because I was talking with my dad, Jeff Simpson, this weekend and he mentioned to me he had just recently been informed of it by a parent and after checking it out was very disappointed.  After I checked out, I wasn’t disappointed, I was angry!  Just so you know I am not some young immature woman who had to attend program after program!!!  I am a mother of three beautiful, smart, and caring girls, my oldest a teenager. I have a degree in Health Science and am now working on my BSN.

I can’t respond to some of the comments made by these moms nor do I know the young woman that made the comments about Uinta and my dad, but I do know my dad and mom.  They are two of the most compassionate and giving people you will ever meet.  I need to make some comments about the 5 program woman’s statements.  They are so out of character for my dad as to be ridiculous. When the first girls came to Uinta they actually lived with my parents on our farm.  As the program expanded my parents moved out, giving the farm up to the program.  Both my dad and I have Celiac disease.  We have always been careful about what we eat and consequently, have developed some “favorite” brands.  As with most families, my parents have certain brands of food they prefer.  One is Hunts ketchup, also, Best Mayo (we weren’t a Miracle Whip family), Campbell’s soup, Lays potato chip, Jif peanut butter and so on.  My dad also likes to make jokes.  He is very quick witted and funny. I can definitely see him making a joking comment about Heinz ketchup and politics.  I can also tell you that he never tried to influence our political ideas and I know he wouldn’t do that in his program.  He has always encouraged all of us kids to form our own, well thought out and researched, opinions. I also know he was a huge supporter of Hillary Clinton in the last election and donated heavily to her campaign!  Last I checked, she is definitely NOT a Republican!  So this young woman has no clue what she’s talking about.  Also, my father would have never made the “garbage disposal” comment, she claims.  He raised 3 daughters and a son and was always very sensitive to food/eating issues! Say what she may, it’s just not true.  Lastly, he would never abuse any animal, especially one of his horses!  I have seen him cry when a horse had to be put down.  I have seen him stay up all night with a sick horse in the middle of the winter.  I’ve seen him stop on the roadside on the way to church and cross a muddy field in his best suit to free a neighbor’s horse that was tangled in barb wire.  

Just a few other things about my parents.  Some people try to portray people like them as greedy.  We didn’t buy our first home until I was 16 years old, because my parents spent most of their career, working for non-profit organizations that didn’t pay well, helping underprivileged and unwanted children and adolescents.  At one time my dad worked in a program that tried to PREVENT children from having to leave their homes by sending a “family preservation” therapist to work with the family in their home.  I remember one Christmas, early in the morning, he got a phone call from one of his families that was in a crisis.  He immediately went over to their home and didn’t return until late that evening!  They have dedicated their lives to helping children and their families; and for a few people to try and tarnish their work and their names is despicable!  

One last thing to show you the character of my father.  He always wanted a farm, so many years ago we were able to buy a small farm in Northern Utah.  The place where they eventually started Uinta.   The gentleman we bought it from was very old and when the time came for us to move in, he refused to leave.  We had to leave our home as the new residents were to move in.  It was early fall and school had just started so we moved a borrowed camp trailer under the hay barn on the property and moved into it waiting for the elderly gentleman to move out.  He kept insisting it would be a “few weeks.”  We soon realized he had no intention to move out.  Sometimes he would unhook our water hose attached to the trailer or unplug the electrical cord attached to an outside outlet.  My dad never said a word, never got mad, and never confronted this old man.  He would say, he’s old, he’s attached to the farm and it’s hard for him to leave.  My dad could have legally had him removed, but he never considered that.  Do you know how difficult it can be for a family of six to live in a small camp trailer, especially under those circumstances? Well, you get through it with a LOT of patience and love. About three months after we got there, the old man passed away and 2 days later, after his family moved his belongings, we moved in to the home!  That is the kind of compassion my father has for people.  I doubt many other people, especially those that blog on these sites would have been as understanding and compassionate.

To those who read this, that is who my parents are.  Granted I’m their daughter, but everything I’ve posted is true.  

I’ll finish with a story my dad told us as little kids.  There once was this Indian tribe and in the tribe was a woman who liked to talk about other people.  It didn’t matter if the gossip was true or not, she always had something negative to say about other people.  After years of this she was ostracized by everyone in the tribe and no one would talk to her, so she went to the wise Chief for advice, asking him how she can take back her words.  He told her that when everyone was asleep that night, he wanted her to put a feather outside each of the teepees of anyone she had ever talked negatively about.  That night she did so, placing a feather in front of every teepee in camp.  However, during the night a huge storm came in and blew the feathers to the four corners of the world. In the morning she went to the wise Chief and told him that she had placed the feathers as she was instructed, but that a storm had blown them away.  He told her to retrieve each and every one of the feathers.  She said she could not, it would be impossible.  He responded, and so shall it be to take back all the things you spoke of others!

Interestingly, one of the bloggers on this site named their first child after my father; another made ridiculous and untrue claims.  Maybe blogging on this site says more about the people who blog here than it says about who they are blogging about!
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Thank you very much for this testimony concerning your Dad. It was received well here.

DannyB II:

--- Quote from: "momof4" ---Bear with me on this one, this is going to be a long one.  My reasons for posting this are varied.  Probably the biggest one is that I hope this might be an avenue to let other parents out there know about our experience with Uinta Academy of Wellsville, Utah.  

As a background our youngest has suffered from extreme panic/anxiety disorder for 5+ years.  After exhausting every available option, we made the difficult decision to place her at Uinta.  The center was recommended to us by an educational consultant.  We did not insurance to cover any of it.  While we had some positive outcome from her time at Uinta, we also endured a lot of frustration and heartbreak at how we were treated by staff.  Bottom line, L.’s therapist, looking for a reason for L.’s issues, decided that I must have anger management issues and therefore was the reason for L.’s disorder.  I should disclose that L., in an attempt to be able to come home, fabricated to her therapist that she needed to leave treatment so that I could get treatment for anger issues.  L. later told her therapist that she had made it all up in a mis-guided attempt to make us pull her out of treatment.  It was too late, the ink had been set.  Sue’s (Sue Hoffman–L.’s primary therapist at Uinta) mind was made up, ‘bad kid-bad mom’.  I should say that I am like most moms, I advocate for my children.  And, when I feel that someone is trying to prevent me from seeing/having contact with my child, I am going to question it and be tenacious in my quest to protect my child.  Our perception was that this was interpreted as a bad thing by Sue and the staff at Uinta–they felt we were too controlling.  I should also say that during the almost 9 months L. was in Utah, we were granted permission to see her 3 times, she was 12 years old!  Incidentally, after she came home from Uinta, she has received a diagnosis of Panic/Anxiety Disorder--Separation Anxiety, meaning that she never went thru separation anxiety as a toddler, therefore it came on at a later time and was that much more severe....Uinta's approach to cut off almost all contact with our daughter, was the worst thing for her.  Live and learn.

A difficult part for me has been that someone who didn’t know me (nor took anytime to get to know who I was) decided who they thought I was and it was a very ugly depiction. In an ‘exit interview’ with one of our local providers, Sue even went so far as to tell him that she felt I was a ‘potential barrier to L.’s treatment’ and that I appeared to have issues that needed to be investigated.  I was devastated.  I’m still trying to get over that one.

After L. came home, we felt we needed to send a letter to Jeff Simpson.  Jeff and his wife Becky, established Uinta.  The following is excerpts from that letter which described some of our experience with Uinta.  While we know that he received the letter, we never received a response from Jeff, Becky, or Sue.  Here goes....

Dear Jeff:

We wanted to thank you and Becky for establishing Uinta and offering a spot for L. to be there.  In all of our interactions with you, we have always walked away feeling your desire to help make a real difference in the lives of the girls that find their way to Uinta .  It’s very apparent that it isn’t just a job for you, it’s a passion.  L., and our family have benefitted greatly from her time at Uinta.  
...

Other factors for bringing L. home, were our increasing unease with what we felt was lack of access to L. as well as our perceived direction of where L.’s treatment might be going.  We understand that our perceptions might be mis-perceptions, but they were our perceptions that we simply could not ‘shake’.  Finally, we could not ignore our parental instinct and we made the difficult decision to bring her home.

For the last several weeks we have struggled with whether to voice our concerns to you, and we finally decided to share with you some things that we experienced while L. was at Uinta.  To preface all of this, we want to state that we feel Sue worked extremely well with L. and so we repeatedly tried to set our own misgivings and concerns aside in the interest of our daughter’s treatment.

From the very beginning, we had an undefined uneasiness about our interactions with Sue.  We felt like she was constantly trying to ‘put us in our place’ and establish that she was in control of our daughter and that she didn’t really need or want our input.  Again, we will readily admit that this is our perception and that it might be a mis-perception, but we are relaying how we felt, not just once, but repeatedly.  Reasons why we felt this way?  The examples are varied.  One simple one was Sue not turning her cell phone off (or even turning it to vibrate) during our family therapy sessions.  We often felt that she was distracted by her cell phone, checking e-mail, etc. during our family therapy sessions.  We want to be clear that this was not just once, it went off almost every session.  One session we could even tell that she was texting during our session.  Incidentally this was a very important session where we were telling L. she was coming home–L. when hearing the news, stated ‘oh you all think I’m good enough to go home?’  Because Sue was busy texting someone else, she made no response to this statement.  We ended up explaining to L. that we felt she had worked very hard and that she would need to continue treatment when she was at home.  Sue never responded to this, and as her therapist, we certainly could have used her direction and at least assistance in this conversation with L..  In our years of working with therapists, we had never experienced this and we felt that it showed a lack of respect to our limited family therapy time.  Again, please understand that we are not completely dense and selfish to not realize that there are emergencies that may come up from time to time.   However, we also know that Uinta has a wonderfully trained staff of family teachers that are always available.  We were just frustrated at our perceived lack of her respect to L. and our family therapy time by the fact that her cell phone was not silenced during our sessions.  After bringing L. home, she told us that it bothered her that Sue would take phone calls from her daughter during their sessions, or that she would check e-mail, etc., during their therapy time.  We wonder how it would have been perceived if we had our cell phones going off and were texting others during our family therapy sessions.  My guess is that Sue would not have looked on it too favorably and that she might have felt we weren’t fully engaged in our family therapy.

Another ongoing issue was trying to schedule visits with L..  One of our main concerns when we made the decision to send L. to Uinta was whether or not we would be able to have regular visits with L..  Looking back at our notes of our initial phone conversation with you and Becky,  we noted that you said we would be able to see her approximately every 6-7 weeks.  We always understood that any of these visits were subject to last minute cancellation if L. had not earned the privilege.  Our frustration was getting even the ok to plan a visit.  

We don’t know how it works with other parents and therapists, but we (perhaps wrongly) expected that after 1 visit was complete, the therapist would say, ok that visit went well, next visit could be <date>, why don’t you plan for that, and we will decide the week of if your daughter has earned it.  That never happened.  Without going into the he said/she said scenarios of how each visit was scheduled, suffice it to say that we were always left feeling like we had no say in when we could and could not see our daughter.  Better communication on this issue would have greatly relieved a lot of our family’s stress. Instead, we often used valuable family therapy time discussing logistics of visits.  If a clearer level of written communication had existed in this area, we could have better used that time with L. on actual therapy issues.
 
That brings us to another nagging concern that we could never shake.  E-mail communication, and our perception (or again readily admitted possible mis-perception) that Sue never completely read our e-mails.  Please understand that we tried to keep e-mail to a minimum.  We understood Sue’s time constraints, and we didn’t want to be parents that filled the in-box.  However, from the beginning we were told (at parent weekend) that e-mail was the best way to communicate–if we had questions or concerns we should send an e-mail.  For example as to why we felt they weren’t fully read, when we would send an e-mail with 3 questions, we might receive an answer back to 1 of them.  We would re-send and this would go back and forth.  We also had it more than once that we would send something, have no response, and then the following week in family therapy we would bring the concern up and to us it always felt like she hadn’t read it, or at the most skimmed it and put it aside.  Sometimes it wasn’t questions, it might have been input and observations that we felt important to L.’s ongoing therapy–we don’t think these type of e-mails ever received a response, or even a one line acknowledgment to the extent of ‘thanks for the information’.  Sometimes we wondered if she had even received our e-mail (maybe a simple setting on the e-mail system that sends out auto receipt acknowledgments??)  

When L. hit her 6 month mark we sent a detailed e-mail asking if it was possible to have a phone conference with the entire treatment team and we listed the things we wanted to discuss.  We also listed several things that we would like input from the academic team on.   The following week when we finally discussed the e-mail, it came across to us repeatedly during our conversation that it was very possible Sue had not fully read the e-mail.  For instance, she asked us what information we wanted from the academic team–this had been detailed in the e-mail.  At one point she said to us, it sounds like maybe it would be a good idea to have a phone conference with the treatment team, would you be ok with doing that?  To this we responded yes, we would be in to that, that is why we asked for it in our original e-mail.  It was during this conversation that we were told our level of reaction to receiving no response from her was excessive.  Sue told us she was very busy working with girls and that she often didn’t have time to respond to parents, and finally that we needed to understand that Uinta was better at communication than other facilities so we should be glad that there was the level of communication that there was.   More than once we expressed to Sue that at times we felt like we had no idea what was going on with L. and her treatment.  Sue always defensively responded ‘that’s not true, you know what is going on with her’, invalidating our feelings.  

When Sue told us she often didn’t have time to respond to parents and that essentially that is just how it was, we were disheartened and walked away with the perception (again our possible mis-perception) that Sue did not really need or want us involved in L.’s treatment.  This was very concerning to us. We did not want L. to perceive that we didn’t want to be involved in her treatment, or that we had asked to have limited contact with her.  We realize that some might view this as a control issue, we view it as wanting to be involved in our 12 year old’s life and treatment and our desire to continue to build a healthy relationship with her as she grows up.  Finally, it was sad when Jane went to bring L. home and Sue had nothing to say, not even good-bye.  Jane had told her and Kristi ahead of time when she would be arriving.  When Jane arrived, no one was available (which is understandable–it was the middle of the day).  When Sue later arrived at the house, she walked into the room, made one statement, handed Jane L.’s transcript and walked away.  They never saw her again.  The discharge summary that we had asked be prepared and ready to go wasn’t ready, nor did Sue explain when it would be ready or even acknowledge that it wasn’t ready to go with L..  Before she and L. left, Jane ended up asking Kristi when it would be ready.  We received it a few days later, luckily in time before our first scheduled appointment with L.’s local treatment providers.

We don’t know how you will interpret or take this letter.  We hope that you will see it for what it is intended to be, a relaying of parents’ observations and concerns and how maybe things can be improved for others.  It is not intended as criticism. Again, we appreciate all that was done for L. while at Uinta.  After several years of therapy, L. had given up and nothing we could do would get her to engage in therapy and trying again.  Now, she knows that she can feel good and is willing to work at it.  That is a blessing.

Thank you again,
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Thanks momof4, I also believe that conditions at programs for children can always improve. I can only hope that the poster "oldest" daughter of the owner of Uinta, took into consideration your thoughts and observations.

Pile of Dead Kids:
Congratulations. You've all received support from a guy whose most famous exploit on this board is dragging a teenage girl behind his car.

DannyB II:

--- Quote from: "Pile of Dead Kids" ---Congratulations. You've all received support from a guy whose most famous exploit on this board is dragging a teenage girl behind his car.
--- End quote ---


Problem is Pile, every time you mention this crazy made up act, you reinforce what all of us think about you. You can't be trusted, you abuse mothers and children and quite frankly we would be very happy if you would work on a attitude adjustment or leave. Which ever comes first. You have managed in a few short weeks to lose whatever credibility you had here.

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