Wait...what do you mean I have an educational consultant?? š
āWAITā¦.what do you mean I have an educational consultant??ā š
ā¦said every former troubled teen who was sent to a therapeutic program.
If I hadnāt asked my parents, I wouldnāt know who my educational consultant was or that I even had one. From a troubled teen perspective, many of us were just shocked to find out that someone behind the scenes was the reason we were in our program.
Colin and I have been working with many therapeutic educational consultants over the past few months. Itās been fascinating to learn from the people who are advocating for families like our own since we had no idea how you were helping us at the time. Essentially, therapeutic educational consultants function as the gatekeepers to the therapeutic program industry, and they are the first people to whom parents are referred when their child is in crisis.
There are many other types of educational consultants that help families gain admission into private schools, boarding schools, and colleges, but you donāt technically need to work with them to get into those schools. There arenāt many central hubs of information for therapeutic programs and options, and there are so many different associations and licensing bodies that itās almost impossible for parents to navigate without hiring a therapeutic educational consultant to help āplaceā their child.
Weāve noticed that every single educational consultant has a slightly different way of working with clients. This includes everything from if and how they interact with their clientsā children before advising them on long-term medical decisions to their clinical and professional qualifications, how they evaluate programs, and how they charge their clients.
We donāt pretend to know how to run a successful educational consultancy; we know itās not an exact science. Different types of families need different types of support. We do know that most business is driven by word of mouth, so we can assume that any educational consultant who wants to be successful is highly motivated to ensure that their clients are set up for success once theyāve finished their program.
As former troubled teens, there was exactly ONE thing that Colin and I needed from our educational consultants when we were in our programs: we needed a third-party advocate who demanded from our parents and our program to help us prepare to leave, especially when we werenāt allowed to plan for it ourselves.
Many parents might not know that we usually canāt effectively advocate for ourselves while weāre in a program. In fact, if what we need goes against the programās philosophy or structure, advocating for ourselves can sometimes result in us staying there longer. Donāt even trip, we definitely understand why programs want us and our parents to focus on being present for the process.
Our point is that therapeutic educational consultants are some of the only people who can effectively advocate for us the entire time weāre in a program; theyāre the objective third party that both parents and programs have to listen to. Programsā livelihood depends on their recommendations, and parents have already trusted them to, in the most extreme cases, save their childās life.
Colin and I want to help young people like us by changing the idea that transition planning is something you have to earn at your program when itās actually the singular goal of going to a program in the first place, not an afterthought. Educational consultants actually have the power to drive this idea forward.
Itās not only just good for business, but itās the ethical thing to do.
In New York City, we have a program that mandates that all patients leaving intensive or residential treatment be connected to specific community and non-clinical resources. Everyone is assigned a community liaison who is not a therapist and is responsible for connecting their clients to resources and following up with them for months. Itās an extremely important step in the continuum of care to make sure New Yorkers get back on their feet after mental health treatment, and itās specifically designed to prevent the retraumatization that can happen when integrating back into your daily life after treatment.
Many of us former troubled teens have actually been in those psychiatric hospitals that mandate wraparound services as part of the discharge plan. Why then, when we leave a longer-term wilderness or residential therapeutic program, are our parents or caregivers not required to at least give us access to a similar level of non-clinical support services?
This could be a gap year program, working with a coach, working at a summer camp, etc. The main thing is that it provides structure and focuses on building a community in a non-therapeutic setting.
When we talk to educational consultants, they almost always agree with us. On top of that, if their business model hinges on word-of-mouth referrals, then a successful transition is potentially the most important placement of the entire client lifecycle, let alone the right thing to do.
They have told us that the problem with what weāre proposing here is that they struggle to get parents to take a transition plan seriously. We get it.
So let us do the hard work for you.
Colin and I have been working with programs and educational consultants to host exclusive online āask me anything - former troubled teen editionā groups for the parents they work with.
We talk briefly about the pillars of a successful transition and leave most of the time for them to ask ātheir childrenās future selvesā any questions about our experience before, during, and after treatment. These are totally free and super easy to organize.
Our goal is to help parents understand, from their childās perspective, why itās so important to have a solid next step ready.
Please reach out to us to schedule a call or respond to this email to let us know youāre interested in us hosting a group!š
And nowā¦ā¦our vibes this weekš®
š What weāre reading
How the youngest and oldest House members voted on the TikTok bill, nbc news
Bad Therapy, Abigail Shrier ā still reading this and still obsessed.
š¶ What weāre listening to
Remi Wolf (always)
š” One last thought
Spotted: Kate Middleton
THANKS FOR READING!
If you found this valuable, this is your signāļøto send this to parents or former clients who can relate to the feelings weāre having this week so we can make sure they know theyāre not alone. Sharing is caring š
Weāre in this to collaborate and support. Please feel free to reach out to us:
If youāre passionate about changing the narrative in the industry.
If youāre a parent who has a child in treatment, weāre happy to answer any of your burning questions and share our experience in treatment and with transitioning out!