Evolve Teen Treatment Center - Lafayette - Lafayette, California

Shivani T.

Helped me through some of my most difficult times and changed me for the better. If you want your child to be in good hands and learn how to cope with their struggles and emotions, trust that they will be safe at this center.

Ana L.

Evolve has been a traumatic experience for my daughter and negligent toward her care.

Overall, this facility has a good therapy program that I was hopeful would help my daughter in her mental health struggles. However, the format of care turned out not to be the right fit for us.

The main disadvantage with Evolve is that it has a rigid structure that does not cater to individual needs.

Evolve also tries to cover too many unrelated mental health disorders and substance abuse and does not provide expertise in any one area. In the case of our daughter, they could neither properly diagnose nor treat the main mental health issue she needed help with.

Some additional points to consider:

- Evolve does not allow any external providers so this means you won't be able to get a second opinion on the diagnosis or treatment of your child in the case they get their diagnosis wrong or don't provide adequate treatment, as it happened in our case.

- You won't be allowed to visit your child for the first two weeks of admission. This initial family separation made adjustment for my daughter difficult and scary at a time when she most needed family support.

- They allow daily phone calls but the first few weeks they only allow the child 7 min of total phone time which gets adjusted every week but can only ever be 15 min at most. When I felt my daughter needed additional support I tried to make additional calls her therapist asked me to stick to their schedule.

- They don't allow calls or visits from siblings.

- They limit the number of family members that can call. The first couple of weeks only parents will be allowed contact. As the children earn rewards they may allow at most two additional members to call but this might take weeks.

- They only allow family visits on the weekends and you will likely only be allowed to visit once for a window of 2-3 hours.

- The kids will be allowed very little time to be separated from the group of children and this could be hard on the child if your child is on the more introverted side. In the case of my daughter the non-stop social interactions were overwhelming and increased her anxiety.

- The very limited family contact and the exclusion of most of our close knit family members from contact has been a huge detriment to my daughter. My daughter has not been able to see her sister in weeks who is also her best friend.

- I found their team generally unresponsive and unable to provide any additional care needed beyond the support provided according to their rigid program.

- The main psychiatrist, Dr. Shikha Verma, is uncaring and will not consider parent input. I only had a short phone call with Dr. Verma when she called to ask if my child was fidgeting prior to admission and when I tried to give her some background on my daughter's struggles she said she was only interested in knowing if my daughter was fidgety before. Dr. Verma spent virtually no time with us parents and made medication recommendations directly to our child but did not discuss it with us parents. When my daughter had a bad reaction to her new medication, I made two calls to request a medication consultation and my request was ignored.

- Evolve prides itself on its precise methods for diagnosis but in our case they failed to diagnose the main issue my daughter has been struggling with for over two years. They ignored parent input on the diagnosis and the fact that my daughter had been receiving treatment for this issue for the better part of a year and very much still needs continuation of her treatment.

Evolve will say that the specific privileges your child receives in terms of phone time, number of family members that can be in contact, visitation, etc is up to their therapist but keep in mind they have a program that is not built to support much deviation from its original format. It is partly dependent on their limited staffing resources.

Brooklyn W.

they are abusive within the fact that i have chronic pain and they wouldn’t give me my meds, ointments, etc aswell as restricting my heating pad to 10 minutes. to “lean me off of it” when they wouldn’t even give me the meds. they also claim they are a “no touch facility” but that is false

Rachel R.

Such a comprehensive program. I loved my time here, the people, and the culture. The clinical team is detailed and thorough while tailoring care to each client. Highly recommend Evolve.

Isabella P.

Staff did not care about our well being, as it was for profit. Given little time outside the house, made me feel confined and triggered (also due to COVID protocols). We left the house about once every week, even then we had to stay in the car the entire time. The only exception is equine. Little emotional support/comfort, I was given fidgets/ice whenever going through emotional pain instead of therapy, which caused me to feel isolated. I was supposed to meet with therapist 3 times a week, but therapist rarely showed up (may be because she was pregnant). Had to earn privileges such as listening to music, phone calls with family, etc. Also, we were not allowed to discuss our past traumas or even mention "depression", encouraging us to bury our past instead of processing it. Overall made me feel very isolated and increased my depression though I tried to remain positive the entire time.

Joshua B.

Evolve has a compassionate and dedicated team that truly understands the challenges teens face. Their holistic approach has brought about significant positive changes

Jon W.

They make it nearly impossible to speak to your child. They have an extremely limited window of time that parents can call, then they don't answer the phone. I have called three separate days only to have the phone ring and ring with no answer and no voice mail. Not acceptable.

Martin F.

Do not send your child here. Daughter came back shutting down , more aggressive and defiant.