Many of you our parents have adopted children. With that in mind I am forwarding on some information that came across my desk from the National Council for Adoption. Here is the information:

Adoption Tax Credit News from the IRS

On behalf of the Internal Revune Service, you are invited to join the Adoption Tax Credit Phone Forum on Friday, March, 23, 2012, at 1:00 pm EDT.

What is the objective? To help families who have adopted children get the refundable adoption tax credit they deserve.

Many taxpayers claiming the expanded adoption credit are not attaching the required documents to their paper tax returns. By participating in this call, the IRS will ensure that you are aware of the proper documentation necessary for you to receive your refund as a result of this important tax credit.

During the phone forum, they will discuss:

• Legislative Action
• Requirements for claiming the credit
• Qualified Adoption Expenses
• Types of Adoptions
• Adoption Credit Audits
• Changes on the Horizon
• How you can help eligible taxpayers claim the credit
• Resources on IRS.gov to answer your questions

Please join in on Friday, March, 23, 2012, at 1:00 pm EDT to learn more about this important tax benefit for families.

To call in, please dial 1-866-606-4717 and use Access Code 7962786

Hello CALO friends and families,

In an earlier email and press release we announced Alex Stavros and his partnership with the CALO team. Thank you to so many who responded so positively. It has been an exciting time for our organization. Growth and opportunity are central to how we think and what we do at CALO. Our ambition is to be the world class leader in trauma-informed treatment of youth. Every step we take is meant to take us closer to that goal.

With that in mind, I am happy to announce that we have created a new administrative position and added two wonderful people to our leadership team. We have added the position of Registrar to our Academic Department and Abby Mayer has just moved into that role. You will continue to interface with her relative to transcripts, credits, treatment team summaries, and IEPs.

Moving into the role of Academic Director is Krista Allison. Krista comes to us from Florida where she has completed all her coursework and other requirements for a Ph.D. in Education. She is currently working on her dissertation, which is focused on residential treatment. Her master’s thesis focused on attachment. Krista has a number of years of experience working in a residential treatment setting. She also has worked as a grant writer and in other venues where attention to detail and a need to understand the big picture have been a necessity. With her skills we foresee great things on the horizon in our Academic Department.

Chris Allison is also joining us from Florida. He is taking over for the wonderful Caleb Cottle, our former Program Director, who has gone back to school to complete an MBA. Chris comes to us with great energy and passion and is a natural in our setting. Chris has lots of leadership experience in business environments where he has overseen the training and management of large groups of teen and college student employees. Chris is, to the core, a compassionate human being with the personality to connect with almost anyone around him. We are extremely pleased he has agreed to join us. He will oversee all aspects of our milieu and all our residential coaches will answer to him.

With these additions, our leadership team is complete and is more experienced than ever. Please welcome these new additions to the CALO family.

Warmest wishes to all,

Ken

Dear CALO Parents, Guardians, and Friends,

I am writing to you today to inform you about some exciting developments at CALO.

Many of you know that Landon, Nicole, Rob, and I have a minority ownership stake in CALO. Our majority partner has always been largely silent and lets us run the business as we see fit. They provided some back-office support for us in billing and IT systems over the years and otherwise stayed largely in the background. There has been much to recommend such an arrangement given the autonomy we have enjoyed, with support as needed. We have always known that at some point our partner would like to sell their ownership and that time has come. The really great news is they have let Landon, Nicole, Rob and I be a vocal part of that process and together we have found what we believe is the perfect partner for CALO’s future. The name of our new investment and operating partner is Lia Capital. Lia Capital is headed by Alex Stavros. Alex has an MBA from Stanford that will provide us with tremendous in-house talent relative to business growth and financial stability. He also has the right heart and life experience to be part of our mission. Alex has moved to the lake and will work at CALO with oversight in many areas. He, Landon, Nicole, Rob, and I will be the guiding force behind growth and innovation at CALO. He will be impossible to miss if you come to our campus. Please say hello and give him a warm welcome. As you can tell, we are very excited about our future with Alex and grateful to have him on our team.

Warmest wishes as the holidays draw near,                                                                                      

Ken

I received this in an email from Annelieke, the mother of two former CALO students. I appreciated her sending this and letting me post it for you. Let me know if what she says resonates with any of you. Here is what she wrote:

How to Get Through

As parents with two children who have graduated from CALO, somehow more and more families in my geographic area who also struggle with attachment issues, find us.

Several times each month I find myself in conversation with parents so much like us, with all of the bewilderment, sadness, guilt, fatigue, and stress-related issues we had.
Helpful people often say to us parents “You have to take care of yourself,” not realizing that this feels in fact, often just impossible. We don’t even WANT to take care of ourselves, because the sense of hopelessness and fear for our children and our families is so paramount. The relief we felt when our daughters did arrive at CALO and we were back home, knowing they were safe, and knowing we could take a deep breath, was also the time we felt both how little we had been doing to sustain our own bodies and souls, but also what we HAD in fact been doing and not realizing it.

One way I did it was to listen over and over again to my beloved heroic soundtracks. The Rambo soundtracks, cuts from Black Hawk Down, Blood Diamond, Transformers, these big orchestral homages to individual and group heroism were the right soundtrack to my life at the time. My girls were doing something heroic, and my husband and I were too. He worked in his wood shop after work, where the noise from saws and fans and planers made his personal soundtrack. Sometimes we went out, but rarely. I tried to catch up on things I had let go for far too long. I enjoyed the feeling of getting up with less dread. I talked with my other children often. I tried to be aware of the ways in which I did, in fact, take care of myself, and had, even when the girls were home before CALO, but had not realized it then. A check-in with a friend every couple of days. Visiting my father and watching British comedy. Therapy.

My point is only this; as CALO parents, we share certain quality of life issues. Our children get through, and we do too. But it’s much better when we understand how, and there are as many ways of taking care of ourselves as there are CALO parents, and it helps to know how we are doing that. Sometimes it’s not the obvious, like a mani/pedi or a great meal out. The opportunity to reflect a little bit once our children are safe at CALO presents a chance to be more mindful of our own care and nurturing, how we do that for ourselves and how others help. Just like our wonderful children, we need all the caring we can find. And when that social call comes around on Sunday, and the family session later in the week, we can bring all of the honesty, concentration and love we have to those times.

It has been awhile since we published our hotel list. Thought this might be the right place to let you know about the deals you can get by just mentioning you are with CALO. You don't have to be visiting a student at CALO, just mention our rate and you are in like flint. Here are the hotels we have worked out rates with. We don't get a rebate or anything like that. They just give the great rate to all of you because we bring them lots of business.

Special Hotel Pricing for CALO

Resort at Port Arrowhead                                        

573-365-2334

Group Code: CALO11

Rates are as follows:

November – February $59

March – May               $69

June-August                 $79

September – October   $69

Quality Inn

573-365-2700

            Group Code: Just tell them you want the CALO rate

Rates are as follows:

            October – February      $55

            March – September      $69

Camden on the Lake (This is the most luxurious of all those on our list)

1-888-365-5620

            Group Code: CALO

Rates are as follows:

            November 15 – March 15 $89.00

            March 16 – May 26 & September 7 – November 14   $119.00

            May 27 – September 6 $149.00 (weekday), $179.00 (weekend)

            Anytime: Room Upgrade is available to a Grande Suite for $40.00 extra

Lodge of the Four Seasons

573-365-3000

Rates are as follows:

November – March $69.00 + $10.00 resort fee

April – October $109 + $10.00 resort fee

Guesthouse Inn & Suites

573-693-9336 (Tell them you are with CALO)

Rates are as follows:

May – October

Double Beds $65.00 & King Bed $75.00

November – April

Double Beds $59.00 & King Bed $68.00

Cross Pointe Hotel (This is a 25 minute drive from CALO but the facility is quite nice and a real bargain)

573-365-1509

Rates are as follows:

All Year $59.00

We have not publicized it very much, so many will not know of a leadership retreat that we took last month. The retreat took us to Phoenix and across the border into Mexico near Puerto Penasco (Rocky Point). While there we had various business planning meetings and we also had some fun. What meant the most to us though was our time at an orphanage called "Esperanza Para Los Ninos" (Esperanza for the Children). We have vacillated some on whether to even mention our time in Mexico at the Children's Home. It was quite a personal experience for all of us. It was tender and beautiful to be around the children in the home. The chance to help these children out--just a little--was profoundly moving. Ultimately, we have decided to tell our experience so that others might find ways to help out with this orphanage.

Esperanza is not an orphanage where the children are being adopted out. Most are from the local community and their parents are in jail or are abusing substances or they are simply so poor they have relinquished their children into the care of Esperanza. There are 48 or so children, ranging in age from 2 to 18. They are polite and well mannered and want nothing more than company and care. The Zapatas, who run the facility, keep a tight ship. The older children help out with the younger children. "Please" and "thank you" are a part of their vocabulary (in Spanish of course). They love to play games and they very much like water fights we found out. Here are just a few pictures of our time at Esperanza.

This boy could not get enough of Rob's goatee

Caleb clowning around

At Sam's getting supplies

Some of the girls

The whole group

The orphanage is funded almost entirely by donations. That is the reason we are documenting our trip. Please take a look at a website created for them by Rick Bills. Rick has been donating time and effort to the cause for many years and maintains the website. Here is the link:

http://www.esperanzachildrenshome.com/

You can donate right online. You can go in person as we did and take supplies. If you want, we would be glad to add your donations to our own. The website has a list of supplies that they most often need if you are interested. Call any member of the CALO administrative team if you want to hear more about the trip or want to get involved.

In September of this year there will be a conference in Nebraska for ATTACh. ATTACh is the premier association for the treatment and training of attachment of children. That is where their acronym comes from. I sit on the board of the organization.

The conference runs from September 21-24, 2011. CALO will be taking all its therapists and the Clinical Director to the conference. We do this every year and find it to be the best place to stay current on attachment research, theory, and treatment. I cannot recommend the conference too strongly. CALO will actually be presenting at the conference on our work with Golden Retrievers. Here is the URL if you are interested in finding out more: http://www.attach.org/2011conferencepage.pdf

The following email came to us at CALO just a few days ago. I asked the writer if I could change her daughter's name and post it on our blog. She was kind enough to let me share it. Here you go:

I just returned home from my first CALO parent retreat and that experience just confirmed for me that Trisha is in great hands! I want to thank you for all the work that it must have taken to pull off this retreat. For Trisha and I it felt like we were on a long overdue family vacation. It was wonderful to have two days to just enjoy each other’s company while being offered many fun and meaningful activities in which to take part. In talking with other parents, I know that some of the families struggled with having so much “together” time, but I was totally impressed with the fact that if parents hadn’t shared their struggles with me, I would not have been aware that there were families who were having a tough go of it. The passing of the students from family to staff and back again happened in such a way that it went unnoticed by other participants at the retreat. That could not have been easy. This retreat gave Trisha and I a lot of time to just talk and play together. Since we were not rushed, some of the talk was just silly family stuff, but I was very encouraged to see that we could talk openly about the difficult issues too. I think we are both more aware of choices that we make that can increase or decrease the peace between us. Our mosaic has already found a place on the living room wall so that I will have a constant reminder of the fun and learning that Trisha and I shared during this retreat. The fun and the “work” flowed so seamlessly that I think we almost forgot that work was happening. Thank you for gifting us with this special time together.

I also wanted to take a moment to mention that I continue to be impressed by the caliber of the staff and program at CALO. As you know, Trisha came to CALO from another facility that really failed her. I arrived at CALO knowing that we had to try somewhere different, but not believing that we would really receive something different. Something that might actually help her. After being at CALO for 5 months, I no longer wonder if Trisha is getting quality care and therapy. I am confident that she is in the hands of caring and well trained individuals who work hard to give her the best chance possible for a better future. Christy is absolutely unflappable and that has been wonderful for me since that was not the case with Trisha’s therapist at the other facility. Christy’s ability to have fun with our kids while making them do some tremendously hard work on themselves has been inspiring. I know that she has a full plate with many students and families, but I never feel like she does not have time to answer my questions and speak honestly with me about Trisha’s progress or lack of progress. The frontline staff have been equally impressive. Many of them go out of their way on each of my visits to reintroduce themselves to me. For someone who is name challenged, this has been most helpful and appreciated by me. Since Trisha is just now beginning to take off-campus visits, I have been able to spend many days with her at CALO. This has allowed me many opportunities to observe the frontline staff as they interact with the students on a daily basis. These frontline staff have chosen an incredibly difficult job where I am sure they receive much more abuse from the students than appreciations. Please pass along my sincere appreciations to them. Much as I love my daughter I remember the struggles we had at home when it was one parent and one child. The frontline staff have all stepped up to the plate to take on many troubled kids all at the same time.  How difficult is that?! In all my visits to CALO, I have never seen a staff member just “lose it” with a student. I have seen frustration and I have heard frank talk, but the level of genuine care and patience they have shown toward even the most difficult students just astounds me. In March I was able to see again the quality of staff there at CALO when Trisha’s grandmother passed away. Christy and her team of caring frontline staff were a huge support to Trisha as she tried to process all the feelings and emotions that were brought to the surface during this time. It was very hard for Trisha and I to be so far apart as the family grieved, but I was so impressed with the extra care and support that was directed to Trisha over these weeks. My spark of hope for the quality of Trisha’s future had diminished to a very small point of light while she continued to slide in the wrong direction during her four months at the other facility. Over the past few months, under the nurture and care of CALO,  I have seen that spark begin to grow once again. What a gift that has been for me! I know this journey has just begun, but it is such a relief to be able to believe that it may lead Trisha and I to a loving, successful, relationship filled future!

I want Trisha home with me more than anything, but until she is more able to deal with the stresses and emotions of life I know that at CALO she is in a caring, healthy environment where she actually is beginning to learn, mature and grow. Thank you for taking our kids at their worst and caring for them in spite of themselves. Thank you for also making me feel like I am a valued part of Trisha’s team. That too was not my experience at Trisha’s previous placement. It is incredibly difficult for me to leave Trisha in the care of others because my job as a parent is not yet finished. I love her and I miss her every day. That said, thank you for helping me to release her into your care for a time. I hope that all of the CALO staff feel good about the work that they do because it is a thankless and demanding job, but from what I have been able to observe over this past 5 months, they are all good at what they do and as a team, you all do an incredible service to our kids and their families.

A few weeks ago I had a former parent offer to write a blog post for us. This parent had two children at CALO and feels strongly about what we do. I accepted and wanted to post what she wrote without edit. Here it is:

A little more than two years ago, we were told to consider residential treatment for our older daughter, third of our four children. First we thought "how can it be right to send an adopted child away”, and then we thought “maybe we’ll all feel a little better for a while.” An on-line search found us CALO and we were given phone numbers for CALO alumni families so that we could ask about the school. My family owes these  families great thanks. It was the first time in so long that we  could see there was real hope, that these people to whom we were speaking, in Arizona, in Alaska, in California, did not think we were terrible parents when we spoke of the chaos at home, our inability to help our child, our sadness about all of it, and our shame, because we did feel that. What we heard on these calls was that there was hope for our daughter, that they could help her at CALO, and that there was hope for our family, and I still remember what that felt like. These parents shared about their CALO experience  with generosity and honesty.

Now, two years later, and with two teens having graduated from CALO, Peter and I have hope too, like those parents before us. Our daughters are  works in progress, with the strength, the power, the love, the self awareness and the healing and acceptance that they found here. Sometimes they slide back into old ways of feeling and being, and that will  probably continue. We’ve been told that the nature of the seeds that are sown at CALO is that for some children, they sprout soon and for others, it can take more time.That said, most of the movement in our daughters’ lives now is forward, toward healthy connections with other people,  and the futures of their choice. Those paths are not what we, their parents envisioned  any more; each child’s way has its own integrity and we have to learn to go with that instead of old expectations.

What is also true is that my husband and I are likewise works in progress, and we are different now from the people who first showed up here with our child in June of 2009. We have more backbone than we did before. We know the only people we can fix is ourselves. We know our daughters will make it, and it’s ok not to know what that looks like right now.   We learned to look underneath behavior to understand it better,  not to make provocative behavior about us all the time, and while we still forget sometimes and slide back into old ways as well, we do better than before. We learned about our part in what happened before CALO, and we did have one. So even though as parents we were not in residence, we considered ourselves and our family in  treatment along with our girls. They would be different when they came home; we had to be different too.  What happened along the way is that we saw that our daughters were our teachers, with CALO acting as interpeter, guide, coach, and wise friend. CALO is a container that holds a lot of pain and great healing, and not just for the children. It’s there for parents too. 

 We have gotten some nice press recently and I wanted to share that on our blog. The following article can be seen at strugglingteens.com. Here is the URL if you want to see the article there: http://www.strugglingteens.com/artman/publish/CALO-VR_110314.shtml

Kimball Delamare is an expert in the residential treatment field and we were glad to have him spend some time with us. Here is what he wrote about CALO:

CALO (CHANGE ACADEMY LAKE OF THE OZARKS)

Visit by Kimball DeLaMare, LCSW
Report on visit and consulting work January, 2011:
Kimball@delamares.com
801-698-7704

Over three years ago, I had the opportunity to work closely with Dr. Ken Huey and his staff at CALO as they prepared for a Joint Commission survey. At the time CALO had been open for several months, but was still in its formative stages as a provider of residential treatment to adolescents with emotional dysregulation, relational challenges stemming primarily from early trauma and attachment problems and other significant concerns.

The staff had done a lot of research, had trained with national experts in attachment, such as Dr. Dan Hughes, Dr. Ron Federici, and Dr. Bruce Perry, and had worked to learn from leaders in the treatment of younger children in settings such as Sandhill, Villa Santa Maria, Intermountain Children's Home and Forest Heights Lodge.
Combining tried and true methods of intervention with their own innovations--which included "transferable attachment", experiential challenges where individual mastery could occur, and high quality relational therapy initiatives--they had developed an effective model.

As I visited on the campus early this year and then spent a few days with Ken I found that the good initial work had evolved into a mature, well-integrated model. Here are some of the key elements that impressed me:

1.   Transferable Attachment as a key component - CALO's initial work to utilize Golden Retrievers as catalysts to teach key relational skills such as trust, nurture, responsibility, empathy and security has been remarkably fine-tuned. Dogs now are often a complete part of a student's day. They board in student rooms and receive all daily care from individual students. They even form into an interactive "performance team" with students who are able to successfully work with their dogs to follow complex commands, complete obstacle courses, and behave far better than the little Maltese we have in our home. The feelings, behaviors, frustrations, achievements and bonding that occurs along the way as students work with the dogs is rich with lessons that transfer to person to person relationships, and the clinical staff are quick to capitalize and impress such learning. I look forward to the research that is coming from this innovative work.

2.   A true relationally-oriented model, CALO does not merely give "lip service" to the goal of providing students with relationally-based support. Training and selection of all staff members has become a passion with managers who possess ever-increasing skill to find the right staff for a model that demands individualized support for behavioral and emotional crises. The CALO model provides on-demand one on one support, so it has to have a rich staff to student ratio. CALO is more than one to one during the waking hours with a mix of 1:3 direct care (residential coaches) staff to students. Adding in therapists, teachers, recreational staff, and nursing staff, there is always the opportunity for the personal support many students with attachment challenges need. Change Academy had a goal to provide strong, ongoing training. Most places begin to stray from such goals over time, but not CALO. I have found comprehensive training seminars with direct care staff regularly receiving 1.5 hours of clinical training every week. CALO has been creative in the development of training mechanisms such as articles, videos and accompanying quizzes to ensure initial understanding followed by live observation of learned skills.

3.   Improved development and integration of allied services--

CALO is one of the only residential treatment programs where there is 24 hour nursing.

CALO combines student-specific individual classes with qualified teachers and over 60 on-line courses to meet the unique needs of students, many of whom lack certain foundational principles in subject areas and consequently fall further behind if placed in general subject classes.

CALO's recreational work has matured to a level where service, experiential initiatives, mastery of water sport skills, hiking and running are well integrated into the treatment paradigm.

4.   Plant improvements - Change Academy has been clever in leveraging a large, open area between student rooms to allow observation, socially engineered interactions of varying intensity and instant access to staff support. All while they have carefully exposed students to many interactive experiences that gently propel relationship work, instead of isolation and segmentation, that youth with attachment and emotional dysregulation challenges typically seek, often to their detriment. The plant is warm, colorful and fits student life well.

5.   CALO is working to better understand aftercare challenges through the ongoing participation of therapists with most families after discharge, but the transition to other caregivers and to a community where students experienced past trauma and failure continues to be a challenge. Academics have improved but will benefit from recent initiatives to improve initial assessment and utilize the special education teaching staff more effectively with the full treatment team. 

All in all, it has been exciting to see the focused work CALO does with a population many less courageous professionals have been hesitant to serve. Reactive Attachment, trauma related fears, older adoptees, those with some spectrum related issues all benefit from this model. I look forward to how the Change Academy will look in another three years!