Sue Scheff: Teen Help Programs - Learn More About Finding Safe Resources for Your Teen

Many are aware of the pending legislation in regards to help regulate schools and programs for at risk teens. This bill may not be perfect, but it is a start and has finally opened discussions. As a parent that was a victim of the teen help industry - and my daughter endured abuse both physically and emotionally, I understand the need for not only good programs, but oversight so what happened to my daughter doesn’t continue to happen to others. Which is why I created Parents’ United Resource Experts in 2001. We help educate parents that are desperate and at their wit’s end. They are ready to make rash decisions, as I did - trusting people while I was in desperate state of mind. Afterall, as a parent, we want to help our kids - it is natural.
Most importantly, this is not to say all programs are bad - quite the contrary, most are good, however it is about educating parents about finding the best fit for your individual child. Questions to Ask Schools and Programs, Helpful Hints, and my new book - Wit’s End! Advice and Resources for Saving Your Out of Control Teens has a complete step by step section to help you - help your teen.

Mike Kruger - Online Outreach Specialist - Committee for Education and Labor

Teen Residential Programs are currently virtually unregulated and the House Education and Labor Committee is going to pass minimum standards for these programs to protect the safety of children. The link to the Markup is here - http://edlabor.house.gov/markups/2009/02/stop-child-abuse-in-residentia-1.shtml - and will include more information after the Committee votes.

Advisory: House Education Committee to Vote on Legislation to Stop Child Abuse in Teen Residential Programs WASHINGTON, D.C. – The House Education and Labor Committee will consider legislation to protect teenagers attending residential programs from physical, mental and sexual abuse and help ensure that parents have the information they need to make safer choices for their kids. An investigation conducted by the U.S. Government Accountability Office at the committee’s request found thousands of cases and allegations of child abuse and neglect at residential programs for teens, including therapeutic boarding schools, boot camps, wilderness camps, and behavior modification facilities. In some cases, this abuse led to the death of a child.

WHAT: Mark-up of H.R. 911, “Stop Child Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens Act of 2009”

WHO: The House Education and Labor Committee

WHEN: Wednesday, February 11, 200910:15 a.m. EST WHERE: House Education and Labor Committee Hearing Room2175 Rayburn House Office BuildingWashington, D.C.

Sue Scheff - Teen Help - Teen Intervention - Parenting Resources

Are you struggling with debating whether you need to look for outside help with your troubled teenager?

Are you ready to make some very difficult decisions? Are you at your wit's end?

Do you believe you need teen intervention from outside resources? Struggling financially and emotionally with this decision?

Are you willing to share your story on TV? This is not about exploiting your family, but helping others that are silently suffering and not realizing they are not alone as well as giving your teen a second opportunity at a bright future. Most remember Brat Camp - this is a bit different. Starting with educating parents about the first steps in getting your teen help - determination and transportation.

If you are interested in participating, read below and contact Bud and Evan directly.

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Brentwood Communications International is an award-winning television production company in Los Angeles, California. We have recently begun work on a new television series about the real life work of interventionist / transporter Evan James Malmuth of Universal Intervention Services (“UIS”).

If you would be willing to allow us to film your case / intervention for the television series, Evan Malmuth and Universal Intervention Services will provide intervention / transportation services at no charge to you. In addition, we will negotiate at least one month of treatment services at a qualified treatment center at no charge with the purchase of at least two additional months of treatment at pre-negotiated discount rates. At the current rate of these services, this represents thousands of dollars in savings.

BCII and Evan Malmuth are not interested in making exploitative reality television. We are committed to helping you and your family and improving lives through the media.

If you are interested in participating in the show and using the services of Evan Malmuth and UIS, please contact us right away. Every day counts.

Email: tvhelp@bciitv.com

Phone: 818-333-3685

With best regards,

Bud Brutsman, CEO - Brentwood Communication Intl., Inc.


Evan James Malmuth, CEO - Universal Intervention Services


Brentwood Communications International, Inc.
3500 N. San Fernando Blvd., Burbank, CA 91505

Sue Scheff - Wit's End - Miami Herald

Posted on Sun, Dec. 14, 2008
Weston mother helps other parents

By JULIE LEVIN

When Sue Scheff was at the end of her rope trying to deal with her own out-of-control teenager, she admits she never could have imagined a time when she would become a leading voice in the field of parent advocacy.Yet the Weston author is rapidly becoming a familiar face in the national spotlight speaking about just that.

”I never went into this to become a national voice or figure, but that is what I have become,” said Scheff, author of Wit’s End: Advice and Resources for Saving Your Out of Control Teen.

Scheff appeared last month on the Lifetime Network’s daily television series The Balancing Act during an episode entitled “Plain Talk and Straight Answers for Parents with Troubled Teens.”

A taping with the Oprah Winfrey show also is planned.

Wit’s End, a 168-page book released earlier this year, is a tool for parents navigating the choices and methods available to help struggling teens.

Scheff, now a full-time parent advocate, said she wrote the book not as an expert or therapist but as a parent who endured a long and painful experience trying to help her daughter, Ashlyn.

Almost a decade ago, she watched her child go from promising athlete to troubled teen, repeatedly running away, being verbally abusive and having serious problems at home and school.

With no experience or help to fall back on, she enrolled Ashlyn in a residential treatment facility that wouldn’t allow her contact with her daughter for six months.

She would later learn her daughter endured months of beatings, sexual abuse, starvation and neglect.

”It nearly destroyed her,” Scheff said. “It took us two years to deprogram her after what they had done.”

The experience led Scheff to her new purpose. She founded a group called PURE, or Parents Universal Resource Experts, which she said has served thousands as a parent advocacy group.

Through Wit’s End, she provides parents with resources to help them sort out and evaluate treatment options, including therapeutic boarding schools and treatment centers.

”You step into an arena of teen help and you are bombarded with a barrage of information,” she said. “This is one way to help sort it out.”

In her newfound role as advocate, Scheff also has appeared nationally on the ABC news magazine program 20/20, The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet and Rachael Ray, among others.

Ashlyn, now 23, has seemingly rebounded and gone on to coaching gymnastics and becoming a mother herself.

Scheff said she would like their story to provide a light for other families.

”I think any parent out there struggling with a teen right now, you don’t see the hope and you don’t think you will ever come out of it. I didn’t think I would,” she said. “`But now I look back and see all those dark times have actually helped others.”

For information, visit http://www.suescheff.net/ and http://www.helpyourteens.com/ .

Sue Scheff - Parents Universal Resource Experts - Parenting Teens Today

As a parent advocate, I have been hearing from parents weekly that are at their wit's end. After going through a very difficult time with my daughter, I know how it feels to be helpless and not know where to turn.

That is why I created Parents Universal Resource Experts - to help educate parents today's teens and finding healthy resources for them.Learn from my mistakes - gain from my knowledge.

You don't have to make the same falls I did, watch for the warning signs, prepare yourself with information to help you when you are at your wit's end.

Sue Scheff: Drug Free America

Parenting today has become more challenging than ever. Social Networking is expanding a new area of concern for parents - and today more than ever, parents need to be informed and keep updated about substance abuse, teen drug use, huffing, drinking, inhalant use and other harmful habits. Peer pressure, the need to fit in - combined with kids suffering with low self esteem can lead to negative behavior.

Stay informed - visit http://www.drugfree.org/ to keep yourself educated.

The Partnership for a Drug-Free America is a nonprofit organization that unites parents, renowned scientists and communications professionals to help families raise healthy children. Best known for its research-based national public education programs, the Partnership motivates and equips parents to prevent their children from using drugs and alcohol, and to find help and treatment for family and friends in trouble. The centerpiece of this effort is an online resource center at drugfree.org, featuring interactive tools that translate the latest science and research on teen behavior, addiction and treatment into easy to understand tips and tools. Research conducted by AP and MTV recently showed that kids see their parents as heroes— at drugfree.org, parents can connect with each other, tap into expert advice for children of all ages, and find the support they want and need in their role as hero to their kids. The Partnership depends on donations from individuals, corporations, foundations and other contributors. The Partnership thanks SAG/AFTRA, the advertising industry and our media partners for their ongoing generosity.

Sue Scheff Talks with Kandee G About Wit's End!

Sue Scheff talks about Wit's End! and the struggles parents are facing today with their teens. Learn more and list live! http://www.kandeeg.com/

Sue Scheff featured on CBS4 Morning Show

This morning I was on the CBS4 Jim and Jade in the Morning talking about my new book, Wit's End! Bringing awareness to parents that are considering residential therapy for their out-of-control teen as well as the giant organization, World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASPS)/Carolina Springs Academy - which I defeated in a jury trial as they attempted to silence me - however I fought back and you can learn from my mistakes and gain from my knowledge.

Sue Scheff, "Learn from my mistakes when I was at my Wit's End!"

Help for Parents of Out-of-control Teens
Resources to help families in this critical time

(SOUTH FLORIDA)—In 2000, a teenager at a residential treatment center was locked-up in an isolation box for 17 hours with no windows, heat or air conditioning because she had tried to help a girl who was having a seizure. Later, that same teenager got food poisoning and was rushed to the ER (unbeknownst to her mother) because sewage had contaminated the food she was eating and sunk into the carpet of the living areas.

These are just some of the experiences that Sue Scheff’s daughter, Ashlyn, experienced while enrolled in a residential treatment program, supposed to be helping her cope with emotional and behavioral problems while building up her self-esteem. Furious about how Ashlyn had been treated, Scheff posted her experiences online about the program and was promptly sued for libel. Scheff won by a long shot.

Now parents can read Scheff’s story and learn from her mistakes in Wit’s End: Advice and Resources for Saving Your OUT-OF-CONTROL TEEN (HCI Books, July 2008). The book is the result of her years of effort to educate parents and provide them with the proper resources to care for their own difficult teen.

“I was desperate to find good help for my daughter, but this program ended up making things worse,” says Scheff. “My book provides positive, prescriptive help for families who want to put their children on the road to a safe, healthy adulthood. It is imperative parents do their homework and Wit’s End can offer a convenient outline to get them started.”

Parents doing their homework becomes even more important in light of a 2007 study released by the U.S. Government Accountability Office which uncovered thousands of allegations of abuse, some of which involved death, at residential treatment programs across the country and in American-owned and American-operated facilities abroad between the years 1990 and 2007.

For parents who need one-on-one guidance, Scheff founded Parents’ Universal Resource Experts (P.U.R.E.), an advocacy group that not only researches residential treatment centers and other teen help programs around the world, but helps educate parents to choose which facilities are best suited to match their child’s needs.

Sue Scheff is a parent advocate and the founder of Parent’s Universal Resource Experts, Inc. She has been featured in numerous publications and broadcasts, including: 20/20, The Rachel Ray Show, ABC News, CBC News: Sunday Morning, CNN Headline News, Fox News, BBC Talk Radio, National Public Radio and The New York Times.

For more information, please visit http://www.suescheff.com/ or http://www.helpyourteens.com/

Sue Scheff: Parents, are you considering residential therapy for your teenager?

If you are considering residential treatment for your child - be sure to read through this Blog - it will be very enligthening and help educate you on a loosely regulated industry - "teen help."

Be sure to take time to read www.aparentstruestory.com and order "Wit's End!" today.

Wit's End! is Now Available - A Mother and Daughter's True Story by Sue Scheff

From the same publishers that brought you the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series, now offers you "Wit's End!"

My story if filled with inspiration and hope as well as offers parents and people that work with today's pre-teens and teens, advice and resources for today's struggling teens.

The response has been overwhelming since we launched the book! I am very proud of my daughter who spoke for the first time publicly in Wit's End! Hear her story of what she endured at Carolina Springs Academy.

Most importantly- learn from our mistakes so you don't make the same ones.