While all programs for children will have allegations of abuse -- not only because some kids lie, but because the employees are underpaid, undertrained, underscreened and often attracted to that work because they are pedophiles to begin with-- good programs will not move out of the country or from state to state. A good program may have one site shut by overzealous regulators, perhaps (highly unlikely, but possible)-- but not more than one.
Good programs will also not use restraint and isolation for punishment (in fact, good psychiatric facilities have reports of one or two uses of restraint A YEAR, not one a day-- which are heavily documented; good teen drug programs don't use restraint and isolation at all).
Good programs don't use attack therapy, humiliation, point systems that put a kid back to square one for one bad day, seminars based on est and have a complete lack of trained staff. Good programs will have-- indeed invite-- oversight and will have a legitimate way that complaints can be checked out built into their own procedures. Good programs will not tell parents to expect, and discount, accounts of abuse. Good programs don't assume that the kids are always wrong and the staff is always right.
Good programs will not keep people in isolation for days-- let alone months. Good programs may have lousy food-- but at least they'll have large portions of reasonably nutritional stuff and won't use deprivation as punishment.
Good programs will not advertise themselves on one site as a boot camp, on another as an emotional growth school, on another as a boarding school, on another as a wilderness program-- all for the same exact program.
Good programs won't accept kids just based on parents' say-so-- they will require a diagnosis and evidence that residential treatment is the least restrictive setting.
Good programs treat kids and parents with dignity and respect and recognize that while structure is important, so is fairness and that giving peers who are themselves disturbed power over others is inviting abuse.
