Centered Health Bailard House - Teen Treatment We were SHOCKED by what we learned about Centered Health! Malibu California

I have made many mistakes as a parent. None greater than sending my son to Centered Health, aka Bailard House. I take full responsibility for this. I now know that I didn’t do proper research. I was taken in by their website, facility and what I now see as a slick sales pitch. If I am honest, I have to also acknowledge that I was swayed by the fact that they simply took my insurance and didn’t require any additional payments from me. Never before had I put money before my child’s well being and I never will again.

From the moment we started the program, things didn’t feel right. I kept rooting for things to work. I didn’t listen to my instincts as a mother. The entire time he was at this program he got worse and worse, becoming someone that I no longer recognized.

After comparing notes with other parents it became clear that this was not simply an issue for my son. I talked with therapists and administrators of the program and felt like I was being handled. I asked to speak to the owner of the company and learned that he and his investors lived in New York and were never on site. They had no qualifications to be operating a treatment program. This was clearly about making money off of my child’s suffering.

When I dug a little deeper I was SHOCKED by what I learned. This facility had only been open about a year at the time of our stay. During that time they had a TON of investigations by the state of California and serious type A citations that you can read about here; https://secure.dss.ca.gov/carefacitysearch/facdetail/198209205

As you will see this includes incidents of kids sneaking out of the house at night, brining alcohol into the program and getting drunk, having staff members get into power struggles with you and allegedly deliberately pouring makeup on the kids clothes, being over capacity, covering up incidents by not filing proper reports, Adults working at the program that have no child abuse index clearance (They could have convicted pedophiles working there for all they know!), Having more kids in the facility than they are allowed, throwing kids out of the program without good cause, and allegedly financially abusing a kid! HOW DOES A PROGRAM LIKE THIS STAY OPEN?

The thing I feel most awful about is I didn’t listen to my kid. He told me that this place was a zoo. Most of the things listed by the state are consistent with what he described to me. I have since gotten him quality treatment- but so regret having put him through all that I did at this place. My single goal here is to keep other families from going through what we did.