Sam B.
1/5
The one star would be 5 stars for my child's therapist. She was amazing given the resources available to her. My review is from a parent perspective... transition coordination and resources, bad information, and terrible processes that accompany treatment for patients specifically. My experience has been a nightmare. For the cost of this facility (nearly $40k/mo), I would expect a higher standard of customer service than received. I read reviews, but the facility markets heavily to acute facilities, which is how we chose care... not on a personal recommendation. I wished now that we had looked more seriously at other options. My child was there for over 130 days.
1. We are out of county. We were told at intake that child would be able to finish school online as a (courtesy) soft transition back to our county to minimize disruption in education. We got home and realized child was completely withdrawn and called back to La Amistad, we were told by principal that we must have received bad information. Schooling was a priority for us and was talked about extensively during intake.
2. For the cost of the program, I would have thought FULL psychological evaluation would be a integral part of treatment especially since kids are here for an extended period of time. How can mental illness be treated without the resources to diagnose for ASD and the like? There are no referral partners in place either. With no such resources in place, for more complex cases, families are left spinning their wheels with no true baselines, no true results but adding in medication components. This was a true disservice to treatment. I didn't know to ask these questions initially, but with no changes in reported mood by child by month three, resources should be made available for further diagnosis. We had to take child for evaluation in a different part of the state after discharge. These appointments take months to be seen. For this reason, we struggled to gain positive results at La Amistad.
3. The transitional plan fell a part almost immediately after we walked out the door. The place we were referred to for PHP closer to home had no option for schooling and lasted up to 10 business days. We obviously were looking for a longer term step-down for child to integrate back home and complete the 2.5 mos left of schooling. We were discharged with 5 pieces of paper and none are helpful except a list of medications. The paperwork contains no diagnosis and was not beneficial to the PHP referral or personal care team we put into place. I would have requested a full set of records to be available for pick up. We did not know to ask for the records. We were handed a folder with paperwork that we rhought sufficient to continue adequate care. Please request records in advance.
4. Imagine your child is out of La Amistad now and you're realizing the records request takes 14 business days + mailing time to receive. No one has the child's full records and is now trying to fill gaps from the last 130 days+ of treatment at La Amistad. I called and the lady in records at first seemed helpful until she sounded pretty offended that I was calling back and asking additonal questions about the process in place like email /fax, how many days, could she see any other requests made by providers in the syste, ect.. The conversation consisted pretty much of me asking about the record's process and her confirming she had been in the position for 2.5 years so she very confident in her job. This is when I found out about the 14 business days to process records request. None of this information was shared to us. It's not her fault but again the family was not prepared for such an ill advised transition from the facility. Providers waiting 14+ days for records, when they should have been given as an option at discharge is another disservice to the child.
5. At intake, the family was sold on the transition plan, which ended up being non existent for our family. With child's services costing over $100k, we've had to build our own plan & w/no records as of yet.
