Children hostages in custody fights (BlueFire Wilderness Therapy)

A number of parents do every year see their child exposed to danger when the custodial parent chooses to decide on a dangerous path with the child in the hope of alienate the child against the non-costodial parent.

In a recent tread on Reddit a parent write:

I tried to get custody back , but the Judge won't listen to me and left the custody with Mother, who convinced her ( judge ) she will do anything for the daughter and that the daughter wants to stay with her. The mother also got a psychologist and a psychiatrist to evaluate my daughter without my knowledge and they recommended for "Change of placement" , By the time I learned that this means to place her outside of home and within days, the educational consultants the Mother hired at the advice of the psychologist, placed my daughter into this camp for 8-12 weeks.

What parents need to realize is that both the medical industry as well as so-called educational consultants are not working independent. The medical industry needs to put diagnose on anyone so they can sell their products. Educational consultants received referral fees from wilderness programs and boarding schools in return for a recommendation towards the product of detention and so-called treatment, they deliver.

Wilderness programs are not a recognized treatment method in a lot of countries. Of course the wilderness programs have hired researchers to white-label the treatment approach but in reality the children could be placed in a enclosed box until they became adults and the same result would be achieved.

Second a number of children have died in wilderness programs. The program known from ABC's "Brat Camp" closed after a death and the local sheriff described the operation as a danger to the children and closed it down.

Sending a child into the wilderness means a risk which is far greater than letting them stay in the troubled home, they came from. Out of 4,000 children treated at the Catherine Freer Wilderness program, 3 died before they closed. Calculate on the percentage!

What is the best option? Based on a research paper in Denmark comparing children in need who was not removed from the home to children sent to residential treatment, there is no difference of the outcome for the children. Even when the parents were alcoholic or drug-users! Fact remains that residential treatment is warehousing. Once the regulated and secure environment is no longer there and the now-adult child has to go on without an important social heritage in the luggage, everything seems to be lost.

Denmark have increased the number of children who are placed outside their home. Many of them end up with Post-traumatic stress disorder and an inability to function on the labor market or in the educational system.

It is not good news for parents who are struggling to raise their children. Because the root of the problem is properly not the child. It is the parent or the school-environment the society offers the child.

All that seems to be the outcome of residential treatment seems to be that the owners of the residential solutions - wilderness program or boarding school - will earn a lot of money while the children and their families will suffer both economic and emotional.

Source:
Daughter , 13yo sent to Wilderness Camp BlueFire in Idaho without my consent , What to Do? (Reddit)

When teenagers run ... what do they run from

Being a parent I know that the most difficult decision you can make doing this job is when you realize that you cannot handle illness that your child has at home.

When the local treatment system fail, when the local school accepts bullying, when your complaints about bullying are met with angry false accusations to the local department of social services then you know that it is time to move your child out of your home. It is not that you try to avoid the responsibility as parent. But you are not a trained 24/7 nurse. You are not a doctor.

When your child need residential treatment, then you have to step aside as a parent with your need to have your relative near to save the child.

Of course the next question as a responsible parent should be: How to I make sure that my child is treated for the illness and for the illness only. I have my level of ethics and morale. I have my customs as an old-school Dane. I know that my children will grow up being an adult in a different world. When I was child there were no Internet, no computer games and Disney show were on one show Christmas Eve. It was OK to be a loner and odd by hanging out in isolation fishing in the nearby river.

Today the society is all about being social, work in groups and drinking a lot of alcohol in short time instead of spreading it out over the week. What equals 21 beers was the recommended quantity per week for a grown man when I was young. Today it is only 14 and to keep the party going the teenagers drinks them one on night staying sober the rest of the week. The teenagers are hammered and it takes days for them to recover which make me think that they lose quality of life. But that is the modern life. Instead of drinking a beer with your co-workers Friday after work learning about what went down with customers and suppliers, communication is emails with initials. Sometime you even don’t learn the name of co-workers before they move on.

So when a child gets lonely and tend to have enough quality in life doing art and just be alone enjoying nature a lot of well-meaning doctors and teachers will help this child to become more mainstream and a social person. Before you know it they suggest residential treatment.

Residential treatment programs are often located far from home. They tend to place themselves in the same area where other kind of businesses can’t function so they can get cheap and low-paid workers. How can you learn what it going on in these remote communities?

I found it difficult but established a network by going there every 14 day. People suddenly knew who I was. More importantly the employees knew that they couldn’t keep anything secret because any suggestion to limit my visitation with my child was met with protest and the possibility of me pulling my child from the treatment facility.

So when I see cases like the one with Gregory Mayer who ran from Discovery Ranch, I ask myself: How did the parents communicate with their son and was the son able to talk to the parents without employees present? I know there are some programs where there no communications with parents for months just after the child is enrolled in the facility.

That is dangerous. Every facility needs rules and guidelines. The parents have to learn and accept anyone of them. They need to know why they exist and why they need to be enforced. If the parents question the rules they must demand a good reason. If they cannot accept the rules, they shouldn’t enroll their child.

I had many talks with the employees at the facility where my child lives. My child has made no attempt to run. My child travels with trains and busses unattended. My child attends a public school near the treatment facility every day. My child has accepted the situation. This is the result of me acting as a responsible parent speaking about issues openly. It is not about demands made by me but open talks where my child has rules applying only to my child on an individual basis based on the illness which is treated.

There are some privileges other children at the facility have which my child doesn’t have. I don’t care. More importantly my child doesn’t care. We both know that it is a question about getting the most out of a situation where the illness has the potential to ruin my child’s life and the treatment plan is more important than any privilege.
I hope that Gregory Mayer makes it home alive. It cannot be fun being on the run and live like a homeless. But once he and his parents are united they should try and find a more local treatment facility where the facility has an open-door policy. Only then the treatment can be a success where both parents, employees and not least the child support a common goal.

I searched the Internet for testimonies which are clearly not false marketing. It doesn’t sound like a nice place I will send my child to. I know what suffering it has for a parent to make such a decision in the first place. I just don’t understand how they can be in business. Just the slightest research should have warned every family not to use this facility.

I send my prayers to Gregory Mayer and his parents. They need it.


Sources:

• DRruinedmylife at Discovery Ranch (Student testimony about Discovery Ranch)
• Trail of Basking Ridge teen still missing from Utah has 'grown cold,' father says (NJ.com)
• Factsheet about the program (Fornits Wiki)

Rehabs all over the world are firetraps

May 6 the world woke to the news of yet another fire in a rehabilitation center. This time tragedy struck the "Sacred Heart of Jesus" in Chosica near Lima in Peru.

14 people died. The cure for their addiction turned into their death.

Together with our U.S partners our organization has been involved in alerting the authorities when fire-escapes and doors have been found locked or blocked at group homes, residential treatment centers and boarding schools. We do know that parents and relatives want to keep teenagers locked up based on the claim that they need to be kept safe, but fire regulations cannot be ignored. Otherwise it will lead to tragedies like the one in Chosica.

As the article states this fire were the second one this year. Another fire claimed the life of 29 people.

I Russia there have been several fires with many victims.

It is stated that the rule is that residential treatment centers in Peru are in fact private prisons where people are held against their will. We must state that it is time for Peru to clean up their act. They need to regulate the treatment centers and close those down which don't provide professional treatment. Fact is that we in Denmark do know that most treatment of addiction are faith-based and waste of time and money. The newspapers and Television Stations in Denmark can random-pick various faith-based treatment centers and show the viewers scandal after scandal involving the tax-payers money. It is only a question whether the viewers become tired of hearing the same old news repeated all the time.

People who suffer from addiction will hit rock bottom and be ready for treatment at a certain point. Only then it is time to intervene and offer professional treatment. Then you can provide it without locking people up and you can offer it for a much lower price enabling the society to treat a higher amount of addicts for the same funds.

Portugal has shown the path countries should choose when battling addiction. They have decriminalized drug-use and have shifted their focus to the distribution network. As result more people enter treatment because the lack of stress from the authorities gives them time to consider their situation and in general drug use is down.

Please do help your relatives who suffer from addiction. Be there when they reach rock bottom and do not enable them by giving them anything but clean clothes and food. Don’t try to lock them up or you will pick in as much risk as they are as result of their addiction.

Sources:

• Peru drug clinic fire kills 14 people locked inside (The Guardian, May 6 2012)
• Fire in Moscow hospital kills 45 people (USA-today, December 9, 2006)
• 37 killed in fire at drug rehab clinic in Kazakhstan with barred windows (My Daily News, September 14, 2009)
• Portugal drug law show results ten years on, experts say (AFP - Google Hosted News, July 1, 2011)

Residential treatment - not promising for any child

In a long article the Washington City Paper does reveal how damaging intensive use of residential treatment can be.

When you remove minors from their home and their personal network, they feel it like a punishment. Humans are social beings and their emotional well-being is very depended of the resources in the local community.

Still some states and countries remove a higher number of children from the care of their families without exploring the full extent of these resources. They don't ask whether grandparents or the extended family could aid the parents in the process of parenting. They write their reports so they can create more work for their department and colleges.

The department of social services operates in many aspects just as private firm. They are looking for work and income.

It is hard for the local politicians to supervise this area as it is a specialized area demanding a high level of knowledge and education.

So often the department of social service is out of control where they demand a growing percentage of the limited budget the public sector can use for the good of the entire population.

Especially during these times where the economy is under pressure and the residential treatment facilies as well as group homes cuts in staff expenses the time has come for a dramatic review of the procedures used in the public sector both in the United States as well as in other countries using residential treatment options.

The money is better spent utilize the use of the network around the individual child. Just because some parts of the family dynamics are broken it should not end up in throwing the entire network away.

We can only urge the politicians to set up an analyse of the expenses in this sector. There are consultant firms which can improve the possibilities the politicians makes the decisions based upon but also the conditions for the children involved in the system.

Reference:
Outsourcing Troubled Kids, Washington City Paper, By Jason Cherkis, January 7, 2011

Denmark has lowered the age of criminal responsibility

Press-release posted on facebook:

Recently the Danish parliament voted to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 14 years of age. They did that while Denmark continues to fail to honor the conventions of the right of a child because they detain minors in the same prison as adults whenever the juvenile detentions are overbooked.

Now it turns out that they in fact did lower the age of criminal responsibility to 12 but the denied the children aged 12 and 13 to legal aid because they have made it an administrative decision whether a child of this age should wear an ankle monitor to ensure that the child will remain at home outside school.

We find it awful that a country like Denmark which in other situations work to spread the use of democracy would teach the future voters that they are not considered human enough to qualify for legal aid.

We are fully aware that the core of the Danish problem with juvenile crime is that residential treatment is an enormous burden for the budget in the social sector. It is so huge a burden that all minors know that they are more likely to avoid consequences of their crime if they commit it late in a budget year.

But the answer is not to use the courts to enforce treatment of what is basically a social problem. The bill will end up at the social sector regardless of who will take the decision.

The answer must come from the social sector itself. They must remove the standard approach which is to maintain a reluctant approach with the individual case until residential treatment cannot be avoided. A focus on local treatment options would lower the total costs.

An ankle monitor cannot provide counseling. An ankle monitor will not be a consequence for a child committing a crime if it is put on without letting the child go through the proper legal process where it is confronted with the victims of the crime so the child is given time to reflect on the actions which led to the legal process.

We must urge that Denmark revoke this decision and find a method to lower the cost in the social sector with other treatment methods and a strategy based on local and early intervention.

References:

Kriminel lavalder sænket til 12 år? - blog entry in Denmark by Birthe1951