Fornits

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

Nah, not from Roll. I used to be in charge of the "stewardships" that we did everyday. I created a chore list and everyone was required to get some of the things done. I had a check-off list with all of the boys. They came to me when they finished a chore, I'd check to see if it was done properly, then check them off. Also... just living with them makes you remember all their names. When ppl first arrive into the program, we state 5 basic things about ourselves.
1. Name
2. Age
3. City/State
4. Reasons for being here
5. Hobbies

Sometimes the students would throw in extra questions to get to know them, like favorite music or tv shows n stuff... but yeah, I always remembered people like that, lol

Ugh, I've been so damn busy. My GF's been sick and I've also been helping her with some issues with her sis. Anyways, keep the questions coming. They're pretty good.

To Psy:

No, that typically isn't normal, but I knew the girl... and she didn't want to talk to her parents. It wasn't CALO that was keeping them from contact, it was because of the fact that she didn't really want to move forward with her program. (For the record, I'm only speaking on what I personally experienced. Keep in mind, I left CALO a little while back, so I'm not exceptionally sure on all the stuff that has gone on, besides what I hear from my fellow "survivors").

And accountability groups varied greatly, depending on what it's been called for, and who's involved. Typically, it's called by a student (or a couple) in an attempt to "hold another student accountable for their actions". These groups have also been suggested by staff, of course. I've seen accountability groups last less than 3 minutes, and I've also seen some last 3 hours, depending on who's it's been called on and who calls it. Sometimes, the group isn't interested in the subject at all, so they just bullshit through it so that it's over with. Other times, students are seemingly "out for blood" if the group is called on someone that nobody really likes. Personally, I didn't enjoy these groups unless the person actually takes stuff to heart, or else it's just a waste of time... because we end up calling another one for a similar act later.
There aren't many guidelines on how these groups go either, since they're typically led by the students, but moderated by the staff. Sometimes, the group can set up a consequence, depending on what has been done. These consequences are usually agreed upon by the group and the request is sent to the student's therapist to be officialized. These consquences also vary a lot too. They can be restrictions (like not being allowed to have sharp things because they threatened students), or regroup (because they can't handle being with the group), or closeness until the group eels like the student is okay. After about 19:00 or 20:00, we typically don't have accountability groups. This is just so that people don't get too hyped up before bed, so we usually put the subject off until the next day.
I've seen groups get out of hand before, which usually affects the whole group for the rest of the day. Some of these get bad because a student feels like they've been "ratted out" by someone that they thought was their friend. This is always a tough situation because CALO tryies to teach us that "holding people accountable" is one of the only ways that you can help your fellow students. Personally, I've always been a believer of loyalty, so I didn't call many of these... at all. I was the person in the group who knew everything that was going on, but I'd advise the student to be smart about whatever they're doing. I was always behind the scenes telling them that I didn't approve, but it's their decision, and to know what repercussions would come from their choice. By doing this, I helped to limit the number of these groups (on the guy's side, anyways), but since I've left... I'm not really sure. Anyways, like i was saying, these groups sometimes hurt. Sometimes, when the whole group agrees with the grievance, it feels like everyone is ganging up on you, and unfortunately, not everybody seems to realize that. Not even the staff, for some reason.
On that note, I should also say that these groups have gone over very well sometimes. Not all of the short accountability groups were because people didn't care. There's been times when the student, who the group was called on, openly admits to whatever they've done, appologizes, then sometimes even set their own consequence that the group agrees to. This act usually shows how mature the student has become.

To Che:

Like I said earlier, I've been away from CALO for a good bit, so I don't know what Nick is doing right now. He left CALO about a year ago, so either way, it wouldn't suprise me of whatever he's doing. Like i said, I can really only report what i've seen and known from my personal experience. And yes, I guess I missed that hold, but I do remember one that was similar to it. This one involved a student who didn't even throw something in the general direction of people. He just threw something into the woods and a staff member (who i might add, is a bit power hungry to begin with) yelled at him. The student (along with all the other students) thought this sounded stupid.... so he did it again and was thrown down to the ground. There wasn't even anyone over there! That pissed me off... anyways, the staff member's excuse was that "If (student's name) isn't in a spot to be able to listen to my concerns of safety, then I'm not sure what else he'd be willing to do. It's a big safety concern if he is blatantly going against safety".

I promise that I'm gonna try to get back to you guys more often, lol. I don't exactly enjoy having to write full essays every time I sign on, so I'll try to answer questions sooner so that they don't bulk up like this.

To thetruthplease:

No, personally, I was never abused by staff. In fact, in my entire stay (1 year, 1 day), I wasn't put into a hold once. I've had my wrist held, but they didn't put any pressure.

And honestly, I think that there are some very genuine staff members there who want to help, but then there are other who have different reasons for being there. I'll get a little more into depth about this when I answer bobpeterson.


To Questions:

No, we aren't allowed to call anyone at all. The only time that we can kind of call out, is when our paretns don't call for our Sunday phone time. Even then, it is the staff member who picks up the phone and talks to the person first before the student does. This is because a student once tried to call a friend to come get them.

Holds have always been a wierd situation. It's different for different students. Some students preffer to be held by a staff member that they trust. That way, it's easier for them to open up when processing whatever is going on. On the other hand, when some students are restrained by a trusted staff member, they instantly feel like they lose connection with them. They hold the mindset of "How can you do this? I thought we were friends". But from what I've seen, for the most part, being restrained by a newer staff member prevents the students from opening up. Only a couple students comply with a newer staff.

I've seen a student be in a hold, literally, for about 3 hours. There wasn't constant pressure being put on the whole time though, obviously. He was put into a hold, then the staff would stop putting pressure when he calmed down enough to listen. They'd usually let go of the wrists, then just hold down the arms and talk. They felt good enough to let him sit up as they talked, but then he started saying violent things again. This held his hands again and told him that he neede to calm back down again, but when he started fighting back anyways, they threw him down into another hold. This sort-of cycle went on a few times, making the overall hold last a long time.

To bobpeterson:

No, the staff don't provoke the students in a sense of saying "Does that make you mad? Are you going to do something about it?". When I say that they're restrain-happy, I mean that they have more of a mindset of "secure the student first, then ask questions". Of course, this didn't go over too well with the students (mostly because we felt like the staff wanted the hold to take place), so naturally... that's where it led to.

The reactions to restraints differed depending on who it was being held. It wasn't uncommon that we could see that it was completely the fault of the student. Some of the kids there were... hot headed and stubborn. However, I do recall a time when a student was put into a hold because they were freaking out about their friend being retrained.

I've never actually seen the paperwork myself, but that sounds about right. The only thing that I would think to add is the physical body check. After each hold, the student is examined for and injuried that may have occured durring the hold.

And yes, what happens durring PCS (stands for "Positive Control System") is the wrist bending. The staff member lodges the student's elbow into the bend of the staff's own arm, in order to keep the student from pulling out of it. They then bend the wrist downwards. This is supposedly proven to be impossible to break a person's wrist, because the "pain" (which is more of a discomfort than a pain) is caused by the tendons being stretched. Personally, I think that if the wrist-bending were done at a ridiculously high speed, then the tendon could actually snap, or even pull a small bone fragment out of place. I only know this because it's what happened to me in football... but honestly, a staff member would have to be really, really strong and being trying to break something. There aren't many variations, besides positioning of the student. The PCS I just described would be called an "escort", with a staff member on each side, both with an arm. A "hold" is when the student is put onto the ground. The arms are on the ground and out to the sides. This also requires one staff member per arm and the staff member is holding the arm down by the student's tricep. The hand is upwards, and bent towards the body of the student. This is basically the same thing. The only variation on the actual bending involves the position of the thumb. When the thumb is pulled in, towards the palm, it bunches the nerves in the wrist, causing an even greater discomfort durring the bend.

To Che:

We all loved Nick. He was one of the most genuine staff members that we had. He personally told me that he wasn't fired, but that he was having family problems. It's true that he didn't agree with all of the CALO procedures and stuff, but his family member was in the hospital. From what he knew, the family member wouldn't be able to work, so Nick volunteered to take over the business. He felt that it was a good time to do so anyways, since he knew that CALO admins didn't really like how he disagreed with their system.

Green shirts can be optional, meaning that the student can inform the staff members that they would like extra attention and closeness. For the most part, though, it was staff's decision to put kids on closeness. Trust me, most of the kids there don't know what's good for them, so a lot of them needed to have someone tell them. I'm not gonna lie though, there's been times where the green shirt was a bunch of bullshit. Typically, it wasn't a big deal. It usually didn't restrict you from doing anything, unless prescribed by the therapist. The green shirt almost completely means that staff keeps a better watch on you. Not a whole lot more than that.

And I'm not sure which brian and kevin that you're talking about. I said before that I wasn't really going to name people, but if you send me a private message, I'd be glad to reply a response on this forum again. I have a pretty good idea of who you're talking about though, lol.

Sorry for not getting back to you guys sooner. College has been keeping me busy, lol.

Anyways, I personally didn't have to go through any medical tests or evaluations. I'm sure that they evaluate the student first though. Most of the students that went to CALO had come from some other previous program at one point or another. I went to Second Nature, a wilderness program and I was transfered to CALO as soon as I came out of the woods. I'm sure that my therapist in SN forwarded my information to CALO. Besides that, the only tests that I went through were physicals every now and then that were given by a doctor from the nearby hospital (i forgot the name, sorry). I wasn't even prescribed meds for my entire stay there.

And as far as restraints go, staff typically tried to use the PCS method as a last resort. A hold typically put the day's flow out of whack, so for the sake of keeping the mood as positive as possible (which wasn't very high anyways) staff tried to talk the student down first. I'm not gonna lie, there's been a couple staff members who enjoyed holds, but those staff members didn't last more than 4 months. In fact, my entire stay in CALO, there was an average of 1 or 2 staff members being replaced every month.* Along with the disruption and having to move all the students away from the hold, staff also avoided holds because each one involved a good deal of paperwork. The student is always examined for injuries some time after the hold (unsually right after, but I've seen them take as much as 6 hours to get around to it). Any injuries are recorded, sometimes even if there is an injury that happened before the hold. The therapist and the parents are always alerted about the hold, but usually not right away unless the therapist is on campus at the time.

Students get at least one therapy session per week and almost always involve a phone call with the parents. This is usually to process whatever the student is working on in their program at the time. We also had another "free-time" phone call on Sundays. We used to be able to call to our parents durring this time, but once we started filling up with more students, we had to arrange times where the parents called in. We got 30 minute phone calls (which i always extended to 40-60 minutes  ). If the parent did not call in durring their scheduled time, then the student would be skipped. At the end of the phone call schedule, there is time set aside for the staff to try calling the parents who didn't call in. If they don't pick up, then the student typically doesn't talk to their parents until the therapy session later in the week. Durring the free-time phone calls, however, the students are not really being monitored, until it has been prescribed by the therapist. The phone room is pretty big, and theres only one staff member in there to watch us, sothey don't get the hance to actually listen in on all the conversations. We can say whatever we want.

Lol, Che, you've certainly done your homework. We typically get regroup for communicating with the opposite sex. We also got the green shirt, but that usually isn't a big deal. The therapist is usually informed of the comunication and the student gets to talk about whatever they were trying to do. This is usually where the students lie their asses off, btw, lol. Anyways, the "double deuces" thing was between another student and me. It was our sign of "I was thinking about you today". This "sign language" was set up when we were both on home visits. She called me every now and then, and before we went back to CALO, I thought it would be something cute to do. I'm not sure if anybosy else has used that, lol. I'm kinda suprised that you've heard about that, lol.


*This obviously caused problems with students because most of them were sent to CALO with attatchment issues. It always hurt when you get really close to a staff member, then they suddenly just disappear. Sometimes, the administrators actually didn't allow the staff members to return and say goodbyes. There were times when students would openly refuse to open up to staff members due to fear of being hurt when the staff member leaves.

Any other questions?

Quote from: "CALO Student #17"

Haha, by reading this, I have a pretty good idea of who the student was.

Welcome to Fornits.  You might find this post by Ken Huey interesting (he posts a fair bit in that thread but is eventually more or less run off):
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=27962&p=337145

How was your experience at CALO?

Yeah... Ken and I were always the same in the fact that we don't tell lies per se... but he does avoid answering questions or having to tell the truth sometimes. He dances around the question, or shoots off in a different direction. I've read up on some testimoials from certain parents, and other anonymous writings aobut CALO, but I find that a lot of them are either bias or overly exaggerated. I've yet to see any work that tells all sides about the insitution. I'm usually someone who sees things for how they are, without distorting events or ideas in a bias manner. If anybody wants to know more about this place, feel free to ask me. I might be the only person who has ever been neutral about CALO (lol), so I don't have any reason to lie or hide anything.