Jane's Story

We live in California, and our now 17 year old son (whom we foster-adopted at age 6) successfully received 18 months of residential treatment in Utah a few years ago. He is currently a senior in high school and planning to attend junior college when he graduates and obtain an AA degree. He holds a good part-time job and is an active youth leader in our Church community.
We had no appropriate residential therapeutic programs available in California, unfortunately, and we felt very grateful that our great nation had other states that had perhaps bigger hearts that were willing to rehabilitate and transform “troubled” minors and their families harmed by abuse. Only two possible treatment centers fit our son and family’s needs, and both were located in Utah.
If there were no residential treatment programs available when our family desperately needed the intensive help, it would have been devastating. We expected our son to eventually get in trouble with the law based on his downward spiral, and after he turned 18, there would be nothing we could do. As parents, it is the lowest point in our lives when we must decide that in order to save our son, we must send him away to a residential treatment center. No parent wishes to do this. Sadly, it has been our experience that especially with kids who have been adopted, the variety and depth of childhood attachment trauma suffered manifests into extreme behaviors and emotional instability. In fact, our son’s older birth brother who was adopted by another loving family is sadly homeless despite his family’s e􏰀orts. They were not able to get him more intensive help. The outpatient therapy was not enough. We want to share our positive experience with residential treatment in Utah to help support the continuation of these very needed programs.
Our son joined our family via foster adoption in California when he was 6 years old. He and his birth siblings were removed from the care of his birth parents due to domestic violence, neglect, and extreme abuse when he was 4 years old. Our son worked on some of the complicated feelings associated with his trauma in weekly play therapy and family sessions, but extreme behaviors steadily worsened following the start of high school when he was 14 years old.
We have always known our son to resist work, especially hard work, even though he was
capable. He would tantrum and quit. He wanted everything easy. He was not motivated to work on difficult trauma issues especially when he grew older, and instead was consistently avoidant and unwilling to do deep therapeutic work despite the numerous, harmful behaviors he exhibited (holes in bedroom walls, stealing 2 credit cards, mirror/Peeping Tom on female family members, failing his computer programming class, stealing from friends and family). He turned to process addictions (pornography and online gaming) in an attempt to cope with unresolved trauma. He was only focused on getting relief through the "reward" chemicals in the brain and not much else. He literally was Not Thinking.
We were at a point in his high school freshman year where we felt that the situation was untenable. We had a team of two therapists (one a trauma therapist and the other a trauma/sex addiction therapist), a psychiatrist, a homeopath, and we enrolled him in Church events and school sports. Nothing was working, and things continued to get worse without our son caring about who he hurt. We did not feel like we could protect our son, ourselves, or others despite attempts at prevention (home safe, door blockers, cameras, monitoring, transparency, weekly emails to the school about blocking sites, weekly therapy to two di􏰀erent therapists, Church, etc.). Our son’s addictions and behaviors created constant fear, stress, and anxiety at home, and he continued to spiral downward - taking everyone with him.
We tried to research where we could get more intensive help, such as therapeutic schools and/or inpatient rehabilitation (trauma-integrated programs) where they understood and treated both trauma and addiction for minors, but we were concerned about our lack of expertise about this space. How do we know these places are credible and safe for our son, let alone being the right fit and skillset to help him therapeutically? We were fortunate to have signed on with a ‘placement counselor’ group, recommended to us through friends, who helped us find the right residential program that treated "early childhood trauma" and "process addiction/abuse". There were only two residential treatment centers that o􏰀ered the specific programs our son needed, and both were out of state, in Utah. One treatment center had a 4 month wait list due to demand.
Although our son initially resisted participating in the residential program for a few months, through continued therapy, weekly family video calls, family quarterly visits to Utah, interactions and exposure to other residents with similar struggles, and time, he gradually accepted his situation, trusted the therapists and staff, and worked on his trauma and attachment issues in order to return home. As a family, we also needed that time and work on healing the damaged relationships, and we worked with our son and the therapists toward a successful transition and reunification.
Our family and son’s future looks bright thanks to the dedication and services we were able to receive from the residential treatment center in Utah. While some trauma issues remain, none are preventing our son from achieving his goals of graduating high school, living a good life, and being a productive member of society. We were beneficiaries of having residential treatment centers in Utah available, and to imagine not having that option during our desperate family crisis is unfathomable. We are forever thankful that this option was given to us.