Useful Contact Points for ASR Oversight

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This thread will be used to make an "address book," if you will, of the agencies and people charged with overseeing the activties at the Academy at Swift River.

So, if you are researching like I am, please post up relevent links, addresses, contacts and phone numbers as you find them.

Thanks.  Any questions, please PM.

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Paul Battistoni 413-858-4591

PQA Liaison Staff for ASR, Mohawk Trail School District.

http://www.doe.mass.edu/pqa/staff/liaison.asp

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http://www.ago.state.ma.us/

Attorney General Martha Coakley


Contact numbers and email addresses:

http://www.ago.state.ma.us/sp.cfm?pageid=929

[Anonymous]

i just cannot figure out why you are going after a school you know some things about but truly not a lot.   i work there and i deserve to have a job not have others like you trash it.  i read once where you were invited to visit and i sure you never did.   we do not hurt kids there and we have worked hard to make changes so there is very very little left of the old school.   i have done nothing to you and yet from a whole different area of the country to want to shut us down.  well come visit the school and see if you feel the same way.  i actually think you would like us.

[Anonymous]

i work there and i deserve to have a job

No. No, you don't. And we're going to take it away from you.

This might be of use.

Apparently, records MUST be released upon patient request... I wonder...

Board of Registration of Allied Mental Health and Human Services Professionals

239 Causeway Street, Suite 500
Boston, MA 02114
617-727-3080 (Allied Mental Health)
617-727-9925 (Psychologists)

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i just cannot figure out why you are going after a school you know some things about but truly not a lot.   i work there and i deserve to have a job not have others like you trash it.  i read once where you were invited to visit and i sure you never did.   we do not hurt kids there and we have worked hard to make changes so there is very very little left of the old school.   i have done nothing to you and yet from a whole different area of the country to want to shut us down.  well come visit the school and see if you feel the same way.  i actually think you would like us.

One, it's not about you or me.  It's about the kids who are there being forced to participate in therapy and drug treatment at a "school."  ASR is no school and you know it just like I do.

Two, it's not about shutting anyone down.  It's about honesty and selling services that are above-board and legal.  ASR sells services it cannot legally provide and uses unlicensed counselors, teachers and drug counselors.  This is like going to the guy in an alley to get an abortion with a coat hanger instead of going to a real doctor who charges far less for the same services and provides them legally.

ASR simply needs to license properly with the state and hire qualified people and adhere to the patient's bill of rights as delineated by the state.  Kids' mail cannot be screened, phone access cannot be denied, therapy must be provided legally to a volunteer participant, drug program must be licensed, kids need to be able to refuse treatment without consequence, kids need to be able to leave whenever they want without consequence and academics need to be taught by state licensed teachers or qualified teachers that teach only in their particular discipline (no cross utilization).  

If ASR can't do this legally, then why would anyone on earth would anyone care if you have a job or not?  Why do people who wilfuly and intentionally repeatedly violate the law even deserve a job?  

If you care about your job, reputation and the kids, you'd be doing this work so we don't have to do it for you while you resist.

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biz-umpety!

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"DSS passed the information on to the state Office of Child Care Services, which sent an investigator, Eric Lieberman, to the academy.

Academy administrators told Lieberman it was true that students were denied sleep for 19 or 20 hours during the first LifeStep session, called "The Truth." Staff and students might stay up all night, then break for a nap between 5 and 7 a.m., then continue the session until 2 the next afternoon, the administrators said.

It (OCCS) cited the school for"using behavior management techniques which subject students to verbal abuse, ridicule and humiliation, denial ofsufficient sleep, and repetitive exercise as a response to an infraction of a rule."

OCCS also cited the school for monitoring students' telephone calls and mail. The agency said that the right to privacy incommunications, even for juveniles, can be restricted only by court order -- for example (editing note: this is exactly the argument TheWho used earlier in the thread and it's 100% illegal!), if a therapist believes that the teen's communication should be monitored, perhaps to support a young person through a crisis in relations with his orher family -- and then only temporarily.

I guess we should add OCCS to the list of contacts, considering they've already cited ASR for violation of children's rights several times previously.

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Department of Education's Program Quality Assurance Services Unit (781) 338-3700.

This agency is responsible for oversight of "Special education Schools" serving students with disablities.  ASR is on their list.

It appears ASR is conning the state from this angle, too.