Fornits

Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora
An open discussion about the troubled parent industry

http://tinyurl.com/yp6mlv

Therapist 'had sex with split personalities patient's other self'
07.07.07
A therapist has been accused of taking advantage of a patient with a split personality - using one of her alter egos for sex, another to be his cleaner and a third to lend him cash for holidays.

When confronted by his alleged victim he refused to comment, saying he had a duty of confidentiality to her other personalities.  :rofl:

The German woman, Monika Mirte, 44, had gone to qualified psychotherapist Peter Blaeker, 43, after she was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder. Much of the time Miss Mirte was in control, but sometimes she became her other personalities, "Kathrin", "Finja" and "Leonie".

Bad Therapy, the case is under investigation
She alleges that Blaeker used his knowledge of her condition to use her for sex, housework and loans. If convicted he faces up to five years in jail.

Miss Mirte said: "It is like there is more than one person in my head and when one of the others is in control, I always have no memory of what happened when I return.  "I found out there were certain personalities he favoured, and he used them to fulfil his wishes.

"He used Kathrin for sex and Finja to do the shopping and pay for it, while Leonie gave him money to travel on holidays to Mallorca and Sylt (a popular German tourist island)."

It is unclear how Miss Mirte became suspicious about her "treatment" but she eventually confronted Blaeker. She claims the therapist told her he would not discuss the matter because he had a duty of confidentiality to his patients, including her other personalities.

Miss Mirte later gave details to police which are being studied by prosecutors in Cologne.

Spokesman Dr Gunther Feld said they were considering charges of sexual abuse under duress. They were also investigating possible fraud.

Miss Mirte's lawyer, Christine Andrae, said: "So far there are numerous leads to show that the therapist made use of my client's weakness."

Blaeker has refused to comment while the case is being investigated.

Psychologist Dr Christian Luedke said: "It is a unique case but it is possible. "If you know a person has multiple personalities, you can deal with the personality you want by calling that person by name until they take control. "You can then replace them with another personality by calling the next personality by name."

Ginger  called from a telephone pole using a stolen telco handset with gater clips to say she's on a secret and dangerous mission, and has gone black for an indeterminant amount of time....

or maybe Comcast fucked up again. Was not a good connection.

A new program slated to open in 2008

Group to Open Ranch for At-Risk Girls
By WOL Staff
The Woodlands, TX -- A group of South County residents are working toward opening Diamond Star Ranch, a faith-based academy for local at-risk teen girls.

The ranch will be located on over 100 acres of ranchland and will be operated by local volunteers as a faith-based youth initiative helping at-risk teenage girls.

The program will include a structured routine of education and chores, including taking care of a horse. Activities will also include mission projects to restore low income homes and help care for the elderly.

Promoting a "get-help-early" approach, the ranch will remove teens from unhealthy peer influences to a safe and controlled environment.

Diamond Star Ranch is currently seeking volunteers and financial support for its in-depth residential care, family reunification and responsibility program. A "Kick-off" Gala will be held at Flemings on Friday, June 15, featuring keynote speaker and best selling author Kay Haugen, author of "From the Poor House to the Penthouse."  :question:

Tickets to the event are available for a suggested donation of $50.00 or $200.00 per table. For more information or to purchase tickets with your PayPal account please visit their Web site at the link below.

From their website
http://www.diamondstarranchyouth.com/1.html
"Among the most precious natural resources of any society in any economy is the YOUNG PEOPLE."

Why does South Montgomery County and the 22 mile radius we serve need this program?

The national average for children under the age of 21 buried in a cemetery is:
                                                 2%
Forest Park Cemetery of The Woodlands average for children under the age of 21 buried in this specific cemetery is:
                                                  14%

Our community has an alarming above-average teen mortality rate!
We must ask ourselves...Why?

"For some reason our young people are in a downward spiral of hopelessness thats beyond our understanding"

In fact, one of our board members has lost a teen-aged loved one.  Please visit www.kaitlynspromise.com  for more information.

We Believe Strongly that healthy, well-adjusted children and families ARE our future!

Development Stages of DSR  
Phase I
Announcement of the vision at the Chamber networking breakfast in September of 2006.
Formulation of the team and board of directors in October of 2006.
Incorporated and recognized by the state of Texas in April of 2007.
Submitted form 1023 to the IRS for non-profit status in May 2007. (Official status pending)
Announcement of kick off  and awareness campagne in  June 2007   (NOTE: Phase 1 is successfully completed)                                        

Phase II
Site selection and securing land in 3rd quarter of 2007.
raise through monthly donations a target 50 thousand dollars.
Start of fund raising goal: 5 to 7 million dollars by December 2007.
Start immediately and complete the Texas license application.
Secure our Executive Director for DSR by the 4th quarter.
Secure a Development Director /master fund raiser by 4th quarter.
Start construction on the ranch in the 1st quarter of 2008.
First teen girls admitted in 2nd quarter of 2008.
To build a facility for highest at-risk-teen boys in 4th quarter of 2008.

Phase III
Initiate an endowment of over 50 million dollars by 2010.
Expand to other towns in order to serve universally.

From time to time people wonder just how big the industry is. Well.... according to "Treatment Magazine": Addiction Industry News.....
http://www.treatmentmagazine.com/about/

Although a sub-sector of the healthcare industry, addiction treatment has its own distinct economics. With 14,000 treatment centers, an estimated $18 billion in annual revenues and 200,000 employees, Treatment Magazine made a bet that the addiction treatment industry’s was willing to support an independent trade journal.

Founded in 2004, Treatment Magazine published quarterly in 2005. Due to strong demand from advertisers and the outstanding positive response to the publication’s launch from industry readers, Treatment Magazine went monthly in 2006.

Treatment Magazine has emerged as by far the most widely read publication in the addiction treatment industry, reaching 20,000 key decision makers every month. ~~

In regards to the TT Industry specifically, quoted from the article below:

Growth has been phenomenal. Reports estimate that the number of youths attending these types of schools and programs have quadrupled over the last decade to 100,000 last year, with annual therapeutic school revenues now estimated to be in the area of $1 billion. And expansion is expected to be strong for the foreseeable future, with Aspen Education Group CEO Elliot Sainer forecasting growth for his company at 20 percent annually for the next several years. “We have gone from just 6 schools and programs in 1998 to 34 currently,” says Sainer, adding that revenues this year are expected to climb to $150 million, up from $28 million in the same period.

Adolescent Treatment Resurgent
Therapeutic Boarding Schools Boom, Private Centers Are Expanding Again and Court Referrals Soar
By John Worley

In the late 1990s, the family that owned diversified medical and behavioral health services provider College Health Enterprises made a fateful move, resolving that they would sell the youth division of the company. Hindsight is golden, but maybe they would have decided differently had they known that the unit, now known as Aspen Education Group, would become one of nation’s largest and fastest growing private providers of therapeutic services to the country’s growing ranks of troubled teens.

Certainly, Aspen’s investors -Frazier Healthcare Ventures and Sprout Group in 1998 and then Warburg Pincus in 2002- have hit a major home run, being early movers into the now booming marketplace for therapeutic boarding schools and programs.
 
Boulder Creek Academy, Idaho  
Growth has been phenomenal. Reports estimate that the number of youths attending these types of schools and programs have quadrupled over the last decade to 100,000 last year, with annual therapeutic school revenues now estimated to be in the area of $1 billion. And expansion is expected to be strong for the foreseeable future, with Aspen Education Group CEO Elliot Sainer forecasting growth for his company at 20 percent annually for the next several years. “We have gone from just 6 schools and programs in 1998 to 34 currently,” says Sainer, adding that revenues this year are expected to climb to $150 million, up from $28 million in the same period.

And while Aspen’s facilities treat youth with a wide range of psychiatric and behavioral health afflictions, Aspen says that more than any other problem, addiction is the thread that runs through it all. “Most of our kids have dealt with substance abuse at one point in their lives,” says Dr David Sack, senior vice president and medical director at Aspen. “But, as is the case generally with adolescents, the diagnoses are often multi-layered.”

And the very rapid growth of companies like Aspen, as well as other big players like Huntsville, AL-based Three Springs, has caught the interest of very large behavioral health providers like Universal Health Services. UHS, which has a strong profile in addiction treatment through its ownership of premier facilities like Atlanta’s Talbott Recovery Campus, has recently stepped up its presence substantially in the therapeutic schools and programs marketplace. Already a player through its purchase of one of the oldest therapeutic schools in the nation, Provo Canyon School in Utah - which was acquired as part of a $105 million purchase of 12 facilities from bankrupt Charter Behavioral Health Systems in 2001 - UHS paid $13.5 million last year to pick up three schools in the Northwest an one in Vermont from venerable CEDU.

With a history that stretches back to the 1960s, CEDU ran six therapeutic schools and is often credited with founding the private therapeutic schools industry. It appears that UHS may have gotten itself a bargain, buying the CEDU schools in a bankruptcy auction of the assets of The Brown Schools. The Brown Schools, whose own history in publicly funded adolescent treatment dated back to the 1940s, bought CEDU in 1998 for $78 million, a very high price that the company said ultimately contributed to its bankruptcy. Also contributing to the bankruptcy, perhaps even more than overpaying for CEDU, were legal costs and a series of settlements from lawsuits alleging abuse and neglect at Brown facilities. The lawsuits, as well as complaints from parents whose children’s tuition was lost as result of the bankruptcy filings, left a somewhat of a black eye on the reputation of the therapeutic schools industry.

Unlike for adolescent centers operated by some of the leading providers of more traditional style adolescent treatment like Caron, Hazelden and Rosecrance, only some states license the schools and accrediting entities like JCAHO and CARP rarely monitor quality standards, although therapeutic schools are taking vigorous action to regulate themselves. “The vast majority of my time is spent working to help our members adhere to the highest quality and ethics standards that are laid out in our guidelines,” says Jan Moss, executive director of the National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs, NATSAP, which was founded in 1999 with just six programs and now counts 166 programs as members.

There is no doubt that the booming popularity of boarding school and wilderness program formats, which has also attracted a slew of small entrepreneurial players like Peter Boeschenstein of Gray Wolf Ranch in Washington state, has meant that there has been relatively little growth left over for providers of traditional adolescent treatment. And the advent of managed care, like with adult programs, has also put a dent in the growth of adolescent programs at more traditional treatment providers, according to Albert Senella, COO at Southern California-based Tarzana Treatment Centers, which runs a substantial adolescent substance abuse treatment operation. Indeed, SAMHSA data tend to validate the conclusion that private providers of traditional style adolescent substance abuse treatment have been basically treading water since managed care reared its ugly head in the early 1990s. From 1992 to 2002, adolescent referrals from sources that tend to refer to private centers - schools, healthcare providers and self-referrals - declined substantially to 38 percent of overall adolescent treatment referrals from 50 percent. “My understanding also is that the managed care crisis hit the adolescent side particularly hard,” said Hazelden CEO Ellen Breyer, agreeing with Senella.

But Breyer points out that the lack of capacity expansion at traditional centers in recent years has left a market gap that needs to be filled. “We now have substantial waiting lists at our youth center [in Plymouth, MN] and wherever we refer out to there also tends to be waiting list.” Seeing the need, last year Hazelden’s board approved a plan to open a facility for adolescents in the Northeast, upon which management is making substantial progress. And another major non-profit provider of adolescent services, the Caron Foundation, is in the midst of negotiations to set up a 40-bed youth facility in Atlanta at a former treatment center.

And while managed care and competition from boarding school and wilderness program formats have put a crimp in the growth of the private side of the adolescent treatment business, aggregate admissions for adolescents have been skyrocketing in recent years. In fact, according to SAMHSA, the total number of annual adolescent treatment admissions soared by 65 percent between 1992 and 2002 to 156,000, almost triple the rate of increase in overall treatment admissions during the period. Referral data from SAMHSA show that virtually all the huge increase comes from referrals from the justice system, which by 2002 accounted for 54 percent of all adolescent treatment referrals, up from just 40 percent ten years earlier. As the vast majority of criminal justice referrals tend to flow to publicly funded treatment centers - the largest by far sector of the treatment business that relies on Medcaid, state block grants and other federal funding for its revenues - the big increase in referrals from courts has likely put a strain on overburdened public systems.

Probably the nation’s largest provider of treatment services to adolescents, Phoenix House has seen a big increase in referrals from the justice system, according to COO Kevin McEneaney. And while Phoenix House offers a broad array of adolescent addiction treatment services, its youth mainstay is the Phoenix Academy, 10 of which are scattered around the country in places like New York, Los Angeles and Dallas. With a total of about 700 beds nationwide, the Phoenix Academies employ a format for adolescents that, ironically, is very similar to the therapeutic boarding school model that has become so popular recently in the private-pay marketplace. With five new academies built in the last five years, and a another new academy planned for Tampa, FL, in the near future, Phoenix Academies employ a therapeutic community style rehabilitation model. “The individual attending Phoenix Academy is living in a hybrid environment in which he is being schooled while also going to treatment,” says McEneaney, adding that there is a very strong emphasis on promoting participation in self-help groups like Alcoholics Anonymous. “We aim to change their value system through their attendance at the academy and by working with the families,” he said.

With the Phoenix Academies there is a very high commitment to a long-term level of care, which costs on average about $37,000 a year, according to McEneaney, who points out that a Rand Corporation study of the Los Angeles academy found the Phoenix House approach to be highly effective. “You also have to compare the cost to a juvenile detention center - where most of our youth are heading if they don’t come here - which is about $80,000 a year,” he said. In fact so effective has the model of integrating adolescent treatment with schooling been, that Phoenix House is in the process of expanding the concept to include day schooling, allying itself with school districts that desperately need help handling teens with behavior and addiction problems. “The thing with schools is that there is this tremendous need,” said McEneaney. “By law they have to provide schooling to these youths, who often end up in schools that have little more than computers for teachers. What we are offering is an alternative for school systems that don’t know how to handle addicted teens.” So far, there are three day schools on the model that Phoenix House is promoting, two in New York and one in Texas.

And Phoenix House is not alone in attempting to integrate treatment and recovery into the teen schooling experience. Last year, Indianapolis based Fairbanks Hospital received approval from city authorities to open a recovery high school. JW ~~

Academy At Swift River
Cummington, MA
Swift River Online Event
Contact: Paul Ravenscraft
800-258-1770
www.swiftriver.com

June 21, 2007
Academy at Swift River cordially invites you to an online special event hosted by our Leadership Team and students.

Whether you have students at ASR currently, or would like to learn more about the program, this session will be useful. The Leadership Team will provide a program overview as well as important updates. A question and answer session will follow with faculty and students.  :lol:

Date: Thursday, June 28
Time: 2:00-2:30 PM EST
Location: At your desk!

Important meeting login information:
https://www.gotomeeting.com/join/333505135
Conference Call: Dial (712) 580-6310, access code 333-505-135 Meeting ID: 333-505-135
Please call or e-mail with any questions about signing on. We look forward to "seeing" you there.

Follow up on restraint deaths in N and S Carolina
http://www.fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.ph ... 613#101613

Posted on Thu, Apr. 28, 2005
Safer restraints in group homes?
Proposed rules would ban workers from sitting on children
HEATHER VOGELL
Staff Writer

South Carolina is poised to ban group home workers from restraining children by putting pressure on their chest or abdomen -- a maneuver that killed two Carolina children in two years.

Shirley Arciszewski, 12, died after a worker restrained her at a Charlotte group home for mentally ill children in September. An autopsy blamed asphyxia caused by an adult lying on her.

In 2003, a 220-pound worker at a group home outside Charleston lay across 9-year-old Jamal Odum's back for seven minutes. He also died of asphyxia.

Neither North Carolina nor South Carolina explicitly bars workers from lying or sitting on children to control them.

"These are extremely dangerous techniques," said Rochelle Caton, an attorney with S.C. Protection and Advocacy for People with Disabilities in Columbia. "Even if you are properly trained."

Roughly 6,000 children enter group homes and similar institutions each year in the Carolinas because of emotional and behavioral problems their families can't handle. Physical restraints aren't rare; both states allow workers to hold children to keep them from hurting themselves or others.

Misleading training?

After Jamal's death, three workers at New Hope For Children in Jedburg, S.C., were arrested. One was charged with homicide by child abuse and two others faced lesser offenses.The charges were dropped in February after prosecutors saw the home's training manual. It included a photograph showing a worker lying on top of a person to restrain him, said Berkeley County Deputy Solicitor Blair Jennings.

"Clearly, what they did wasn't right," Jennings said. "But we weren't going to be able to prove he acted recklessly with the training he received."

Jay Orvin, president and CEO of the home's parent corporation, said New Hope Treatment Centers voluntarily removed the photo after Jamal's death because of concerns that it "might be confusing."

He said it did not depict a worker laying across a child, but showed a child face-down on the floor with a worker "forming a bridge" over the child's body and holding his arms.

The manual did not endorse restraining children by putting pressure on their torso, Orvin said.

"There was never, ever, ever anything in our manuals that said it was OK to do it that way," he said.

What would be banned?

Laying across a child's back or chest would be banned outright under the new rules the S.C. Department of Health and Human Services is considering, according to a draft obtained by the Observer.

The prohibited practices would also include causing pain to force compliance, sitting on or straddling any part of the body, or using drugs or mechanical devices to restrain a child.

The 11-page proposed "Emergency Safety Interventions" policy, which also covers the use of locked seclusion rooms, requires homes to notify a child's parents or guardian as soon as possible after performing a restraint.
[This is an excellent measure, provide the program complies.]

They also mandate that workers learn de-escalation techniques and understand the risk of so-called positional asphyxia, which can occur when body position restricts a person's ability to breathe. Under the proposal, facilities would need to create a plan for reducing the use of restraints.
[Also good. No more excuses, "They didn't know a restraint could result in a death".]

The new regulations would affect roughly 1,800 children in group homes and similar institutions across South Carolina whose treatment is paid for by state and federal Medicaid dollars.
[What? Kids in private-pay facilities don't deserve the same protection? How much sense does that make?]

States set the rules for providers who treat kids on Medicaid, the government's health insurance plan for the poor and disabled. S.C. officials said Jamal's death was among the reasons they decided to tighten their standards.

State clinicians who regularly visited the homes also urged the agency to adopt better guidelines, said Jeanne Carlton, an HHS supervisor.

The use of restraints has undergone scrutiny in recent years after deaths at facilities across the country, said Caton, the advocate.

Medications or health conditions such as asthma make some holds that appear safe dangerous for children, she said. Children who have suffered physical or sexual abuse at home -- as many in group homes have -- find restraints particularly hard to endure, she said.

"When you take a child who has been sexually abused and hold them down, you are retraumatizing them," she said.

N.C. and beyond

North Carolina doesn't explicitly ban restraints that compress the chest, or require training in the dangers of such holds. About 4,000 children live in the state's group homes. But N.C. rules say restraints can't be used in a way that causes harm or abuse. And Joan Kaye, an N.C. Division of Mental Health team leader, said regulators review all training programs that group homes use.

"We know that that's an unsafe practice," she said. "We would definitely not be approving any training program that had that in it."

Shirley was not the only N.C. child to die after a restraint. In 1999, 9-year-old Timithy Thomas suffocated at a Banner Elk charter school on the grounds of a group home during a "basket hold." In that restraint, a worker stands behind a child, crosses his arms over the child's chest and eases him to the ground.

S.C. health and human services staff are reviewing comments from providers and advocates about the draft, said Sheila Mills, an HHS bureau chief. It could still change.

Penalties for breaking the restraint rules would resemble those for breaking other Medicaid standards, she said. Fines are set on a case-by-case basis, she said.

When that review is done, agency administrator Robert Kerr will decide whether to adopt the new standards. The decision should be made by June 30, officials said.

Proposed Prohibitions for S.C. Group Homes

Pain inducement to obtain compliance
Bone locks
Hyperextension of joints
Peer restraint
Use of seclusion rooms that do not meet agency, licensing or accreditation standards
The use of extra medications to control an individual's behavior or restrict his or her freedom
Use of restraint when child would be medically compromised
Mechanical restraint
Restraint and seclusion used simultaneously with mechanical restraint devices
Pressure or weight on the chest, lungs, sternum, diaphragm, back or abdomen, causing chest compression
Straddling or sitting on any part of the body, or any maneuver that places pressure, weight or leverage on the neck or throat, on any artery, or on the back of the child's head or neck, or that otherwise obstructs or restricts the circulation of blood or obstructs an airway
Any type of choking, and any type of neck or head hold
Any technique that involves pushing on or into the child's mouth, nose, eyes or any part of the face, or covering the face or body with anything, including soft objects such as pillows
Any maneuver that involves punching, hitting, poking, pinching or shoving

Posted: Wednesday, 06 June 2007 7:48AM
Teens Face Prison for Brutal Hazing of Schoolmates
 
MANCHESTER, Conn.  Three boys accused of brutally hazing three younger classmates at a Glastonbury home for gifted minority boys are facing prison time after accepting a plea agreement.
     
Jeff Utobor, Silvester Baez and Pedro Reyes each pleaded no contest Tuesday to a reduced charge of second-degree assault before Judge Raymond Norko in Superior Court.
     
The three teenagers, who are from outside the state, lived at a home in Glastonbury and attended the local high school through a program called A Better Chance. They were among four upperclassmen accused of abusing three freshmen in the home.
     
According to court documents, the victims were ordered to do push-ups and to fight each other as well as being slapped, punched, kicked and hit with pingpong paddles.
[Hmm. Sound familiar? Prison sentences for the same violence some kids experience in program? Double-standard? Only "therapeutic" if doled out by staff?]
     
Utobor, Baez and Reyes accepted the state's offer of five years in prison, suspended after nine months, followed by five years of probation. Norko may sentence them to up to 24 months active prison time.
     
A fourth teen, Christopher Lewis, pleaded guilty to third-degree assault in March and was given probation.
     
The teenagers are 16 or 17 and are from New York City or Massachusetts. They were participants in A Better Chance, a 32-year-old program that accepts out-of-state boys from cities and offers them a Glastonbury education.
     
The three have separate sentencing dates in August.    
___
Information from: The Hartford Courant, http://www.courant.com
(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)