The New Foundation

Please, stay far away from this place. I spent three weeks inpatient here, followed by a month outpatient, and am still dealing with the effects.
* There is no age segregation. Eleven-​year-​olds are thrown in with patients as old as seventeen, even allowed to sleep in the same room provided they are the same gender.
* While the males have two inpatient programs that are maintained separately (behavioral issues and substance abuse), the females do not, and are together all day and night except for one hour in the evening. Outpatient is segregated by behavioral issues vs. substance abuse (males and females are not separated).
* Staff restraining children in potentially harmful ways.
* The children inpatient go to «school» on the campus every weekday, during which they are assigned busywork that doesn’t count towards their grades at their home schools. If the junior high or high school they attend sends work for them to complete, they are not allowed to do it during «school hours.»
* There is only a psychiatrist present a few days a week, and she usually only speaks to patients over the phone or through video chat. I never saw her in person, although I am told she does show up occasionally. Therapists pull each patient a couple of times a week.
* Multiple group therapy sessions where the therapist was more than fifteen minutes late to an hour-​long session, including once where a therapist neglected to show up at all.
* No intervention from staff when there was verbal abuse between patients, sometimes including slurs. There is a time when adults need to step in, and they failed to do this.
* Staff lying to the children, promising they would be able to see their families the next day — AFTER informing said families they wouldn’t be allowed to visit for over a week.
* I was told to lie to my parents during a phone call. I had mentioned that I was being teased, tormented, and called names, and the staff member in the room stopped me and said, «I want you to tell your parents that those things were directed at (other child’s name), not you.» These statements were directed at me, and the same staff member had witnessed it just earlier.
* One staff member was persistently focused on texting despite being the only adult supervising seven or eight children.
* Outpatient is one hour of group therapy with a therapist present, one hour of doing «treatment worksheets,» and the rest of the time is spent at the park or doing an art project. Talk about wasted time!
* In the inpatient program, they will freely give out razors to anyone who claims they want to shave. No one using razors is monitored beyond the normal fifteen-​minute checks.
* Security is laughable. In the time I spent there, I can recall at least three girls who managed to run away. Two escaped out a window during the night, and one simply asked a staff member if she could go outside to «practice [her] singing.» The staff member agreed and sent her out alone; twenty minutes later she was gone. All three girls were found, but this kind of frequency is absolutely inexcusable.
* During the night, the staff member on duty is supposed to check on everyone in ten to fifteen-​minute intervals. This happened only rarely, sometimes with more than half an hour passing between checks.
* Here’s the big one… I was assaulted while staying overnight. My roommate threatened to beat me up, and though this was said in front of staff, they did nothing until I specifically asked. When I brought it up to them, they waved it off and said I could sleep in the next room if I wanted to (directly across an empty hall from where I had been). I went to sleep in the next room and woke up to my old roommate pinning me down and hurting me. Even after that, this patient did not face any consequences, nor were either of us moved to a different part of the building at night.
There is nothing a preteen or teenager could have done that deserves this kind of «treatment.» Do whatever it takes to go elsewhere.