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Facility Question and Answers / Re: Any info on Havenwood Academy ?
« on: July 14, 2021, 01:56:11 AM »Quote from: Natalie G.
8/29/2017 - We have a daughter who has been at Havenwood for 6 months and is still currently enrolled. We are not happy with many things in their program and are struggling to work through these issues but are planning on moving her as soon as we find a better program. I am putting my personal phone number on here and am willing to talk with any parents who would like a candid review of Havenwood
1/11/2018 - I feel like I can now post my full review instead of just my phone number because we finally moved our daughter out of Havenwood on 12/27/17 after her being there for 10 months. I have gotten many calls from parents just like me who are looking at RTC programs or who have children currently in terrible RTC programs, and we're all feeling very overwhelmed and frustrated. In realizing this need, as well as having had a very negative experience at Havenwood, it is my intention is to start a website/forum/database for reviews of RTC programs - specifically for California state funded programs. There has to be more accountability for these programs to do what they say they're going to do! If you're interested in being a part of this endeavor, please email natgebhart@gmail.com or call me at (916) 934-3270.
With that being said, here are a just a few of my reasons (not in any particular order) for a one star and pulling our daughter out of the self-claimed "premier" program at Havenwood:
1. They falsely advertise their program on their website and in their parent welcome letter after admission to the program. Whatever you read on their site, do not believe it.
- There is no music therapy, no art therapy, no recreation therapy, no outdoor therapy, no access to a gym and no regular fitness routine, no rock climbing, very few outings and extracurricular events (going on a drive is the highlight of the weekend), non-existent nutrition program (will discuss further below), their staff are hardly experts in any of the modes of treatment they say they offer, the school program is a joke (will discuss further below), and so much more inflated mumbo-jumbo to try impress parents.
2. The house where the girls are at is depressing.
- It is a very average house in the middle of an average to low-income neighborhood. Check it out on Google Maps and Zillow - then, imagine 16 teenage girls with mental and behavioral issues crammed into that small house. It feels more like a group home, and one of the rooms holds 6 girls. The backyard is tiny and doesn't insight any desire to get outside for fresh air or exercise. There are indentations/holes in the walls where girls have destroyed property and the carpet is trashed.
3. HORRIBLE communication with parents.
- We were not notified of changes to staff in the home (which was often) and would hear about it from our daughter during our family phone call.
- We were not given contact information of the staff who are actually in the home. Some staff literally refused to give us their phone number and told us to email them instead. So we did that, but emails were not returned.
- Our daughter was put on a new medication for three weeks without our approval.
- We were not given information about the parent weekends until (maybe) two weeks before we were supposed to arrive, making it difficult to plan for travel, childcare, time off work, etc.
- We were consistently told different things by different staff - no one was ever on the same page.
- We asked for their grievance policy and were never responded to.
- We filed a complaint with the BBB of Utah and they did not respond to that either.
4. Their educational program is a joke.
- The girls are in a class of 8. There is a "teacher" and an aide in the room. The girls are put in front of a computer to read a lesson, and then complete "post tests." The computer then gives them a score and they start on the next lesson. In "school" it is acceptable for the girls to misbehave, and get into physical fights, resulting in restraints. We were supposed to receive a weekly report from her teacher on her progress, but that was inconsistent as well, sometimes being a month or more late. There is no accountability for the girls to do their work. If they don't want to do their work, they don't have to and there is no requirement for them to catch up over the weekend and/or lose privileges. Our daughter was on track academically, liked to learn, and was an A/B student before Havenwood. But, because of this "school," she began to hate learning and fell very behind.
5. There is no nutrition/health program. They claim to feed the girls "optimal nutrition" but the foods they serve are high in saturated fat and cholesterol with pasta, burgers, nachos, pizza and high sugar desserts being on the menu regularly. Our daughter gained 60 pounds while at Havenwood.
Overall, this is not a good RTC. I do believe the people there are kind to the girls and have good intentions, but the execution is really off, the leadership is weak, and the program and lacking in many key areas mentioned above. There is so much more here that I didn't discuss, so if you have any further questions, please feel free to email or call me.
4/7/2020 - This is an update from my posted Yelp review back in January of 2018 where I outlined the terrible experience we had when our daughter was at Havenwood for 10 months. In that posting I put my phone number and personal email.
***Since then, we went took Havenwood through a lengthy 9-month arbitration with the Better Business Bureau of Utah. The arbitrator found Havenwood to have "major discrepancies between what was advertised and what was delivered" in four major areas of our daughters treatment. The complete document of that final arbitration can be found here - drive.google.com/drive/f…. Our claims are the first part of the document and make reference to an 18 page document we submitted that showed all proof of our claims. The detailed findings from the arbitrator start on page 4 for you to verify these discrepancies. Also, the last page of this document is the BBB final arbitration decision where they told Havenwood to REMOVE all the falsified information from their website and their parent welcome letter. Did Havenwood do this? No. They are no longer accredited with the BBB, but that was the only restitution we had with them.
So, why am I posting this update now?
***We have since had a wonderful experience at a residential treatment facility and our daughter has now successfully graduated and transitioned home. I want that same hope and help for any person reading this review, it does exist - just not at Havenwood.
***I am STILL receiving calls/emails from parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, who currently have their daughters at Havenwood and their sister program Zion Hills Academy and are having major issues similar to mine, or even WORSE.
***I also am still receiving calls/email from those who are telling me what Havenwood is promising and getting a "bad feeling" (for good reason) and then searching the internet and finding my review.
***And, I am also getting calls/emails from teens themselves who have been at Havenwood and were treated poorly.
***I have also gotten calls from concerned social workers.
I contacted Havenwood on 4/5/2020 asking them for any updated policies and procedures, their new parent welcome's letter, and why I continue to get phone calls of concern.
***I am asking anyone who HAS or HAS HAD a daughter go through Havenwood or any of their other affiliated programs such as Zion Hills Academy, to please call or email me with any pertinent information about their experiences.