Project patch is a horrible program. They lie to your parents and other clients there and say it helps you when it really doesn’t. I was a resident there and signing over guardianship to them is the worst thing you can do. I was grabbed by one of there staff when I was just walking up the stairs to go to my room. They are legally allowed to do anything to you and get away with it because they have people to support them while residents out at treatment facility others don’t believe them. I can keep going on and on. Parents please trust me, this place makes your kids insane. I got kicked out after 4 months out of 6 months. It may work for some kids but some not. There were residents that I knew and Project patch made them crazy. The staff at project patch are very controlling and mean. PARENTS PLEASE DONT SEND YOUR KIDS HERE !
Please, do not send you children here. I was a resident as a teen and this program is abusive. I am now an adult with my own children, and I can say with confidence that I would never, under any circumstances, place my child in a program like this. I have been undoing the trauma Patch left me with for years. I still have nightmares of being here. The “consequences“ given are cruel and brutal, and they are given for the littlest hint of defiance or rule breaking. When on consequence, residents were not allowed to talk to anyone, including staff. They weren‘t allowed to eat typical foods. They weren’t allowed to sit on anything soft (like a couch or cushioned chair) and were instead forced to sit on the ground. They were subjected to hard physical labor and pushed beyond their limits. They were isolated and shamed. There is no free time to do anything enjoyable; every waking moment is spent working, in isolation, doing physical labor, etc. If they “failed” a day, their time started over. I could go on. It was awful. Even when not on consequence, every little behavior is closely analyzed and you live in constant fear of messing up. The staff strips residents of any sense of independence or individuality and breaks their will. You are punished and intimidated and shamed into submission, until you can achieve immediate “simple compliance” (their term) without questioning their authority. OTP/wilderness therapy is also awful. It is made out to be therapeutic and helpful, but it’s the opposite. Every resident went at some point, usually in the winter: The residents are given a tarp and some logs are are told to make a “tent” barely big enough to fit them. At night, you sleep in only long johns and a sleeping bag, because if they give you warmer clothes, they fear you’ll run away (and it is only done in the dead of winter for this reason). You are given flip flops, even in several feet of snow, in case you need to leave your tent to go to the bathroom at night. You can’t talk to anyone at all. You don’t shower or bathe. It’s truly awful and barbaric. The staff supervising get to spend their nights in a warm cabin while scared teenagers are left outside in freezing weather in the middle of the woods. Parents are lied to and forced to sign over guardianship of their children. They are also told to expect their child to lie to them about abuse and “prepared” be manipulated by their child. A resident’s contact with their parent was closely monitored for a very long time, until they could be “trusted” (at which point they will be too terrified of being punished to say anything negative about the program, lest I be accused of “staff bashing”). My parents pulled me from the program after 9 months when they realized that it was hurting more than it was helping, and I’m glad they did. But here’s the kicker: they still had to pay the full 12 months. This is to discourage parents from pulling their children. This goes to show that the program is about money and power, not the ultimate good of the teens it claims to help. Project Patch, along with other programs, are abusive and create more trauma. I understand that parents are desperate to help their children, but sending them to a program like this will only deepen and worsen their trauma. Please do your child a favor, and research alternatives. The troubled teen industry is corrupt to its core. Your child deserves better. I am thankfully a well adjusted adult now, but that is in spite of Patch, not because of it. I have an incredible husband, wonderful children, and I’m an active member of my church. I have been supported and worked through my trauma in counseling. I wish that trauma had never been there in the first place, but I’m going to use it to warn parents about the darkness of residential treatment programs and urge them to consider alternatives for their children. Research the troubled teen industry, and choose a better, more evidence-based option for your child. Don’t compound whatever issue they are currently experiencing with more trauma.
I went to patch from 2017-2018. All that i have to say is that this place changed my life i call back as much as i can and i have made hella good friends from this place. one of my best friends went there with me and we talked a lot and i met so many good people like you dont even know. i love the staff and how comforting they are and they are always there for you if you need to talk to someone. there are some bad parts but i was on work crew for about a month and i didn't mind it i liked the food they gave you but if you want to lose weight then you really have to try to.
Without a doubt changed my daughters life forever. When there was nothing else we could do we were miraculously sent information on Project Patch. They are thorough & safety minded and that is for the sake of the child AND the parents. They set realistic goals for each child and have a detailed plan of action. It absolutely works. My daughter thinks differently before she acts now. She had made life long friends and has been back to patch to visit and check in with everyone. Her life and ours changed the day she entered Project Patch. We still donate yearly because we think so highly of the staff and what they are doing for our future generations. Saying Thank you is so inadequate for saving the life of your child but THANK YOU PROJECT PATCH for all you do!
Project Patch made me feel miserable. They claim to rebuild families but my life was just the same when I got back. Patch ripped me from my connection and communication with my parents by enforcing 2 phone calls a week, 10 minutes each. They isolate you, make you feel horrible for every move you make and force you to talk about things that hurt you because it's "therapeutical" and they threaten not to let you go home if you dont talk about your pain or trauma. They are closed minded. Thank God I was Canadian and legally had to be on Canadian soil after my year was up. They couldn't accept that I had moved on from the things in my past. They just needed something to make them feel successful when they had they're morning staff meeting, even if it meant tearing apart the lives and security of young girls. I can honestly say that we all experienced ulcers eating out our stomachs at every staff meeting. Doesnt make a difference if we followed all the rules or held our peers accountable, they found some tiny reason to make you feel belittled. Just to look for a cause to give you a zero on the daily overview. Project Patch is not about rebuilding and helping teens, it's about isolation. It's very clear to see, especially when they divide half the girls in the dorm to separate groups to "reduce drama". What if there was someone in the other group that made you feel safe, some girl that you really connected to? Maybe someone that could become a life long friend? Well forget about that because you're not allowed to talk to the other group, make eye contact with the other group and God forbid you laugh at a joke told by the other group...cause it's considered "communication". Anxiety and stress, constant fast heart beating 24/7. Thinking about every move, "what if I get a zero?" ALL DAY, ALL NIGHT LONG! As a woman, we have bodily functions and if it grosses you out skip a few lines. Never in my life have I felt so much pressure and anxiety, hard core stress pumping through my veins! I didn't have my period for the first 4 months of being at Project Patch until my body finally adjusted to the stress. Patch was a waste of my time, a year of my life gone that I can never get back and a waste of my parents hard earned money! Claiming to rebuild families when all they really do is drain the parents financially, and the teens emotionally and mentally!
Overall it was good for our family. I know it was especially hard for our son, but we were able to address issues and work through them. I did have a problem with the meds they put him on, but we were able to work through that. I do feel that there is room for improvement with counselors, I don't feel they always listened to my son and assumed some things and that they don't meet often enough for an inpatient facility. However, now that he is home and off those meds we have our son "back," our relationship is renewed and we are all doing well. We really enjoyed the family life experience as a follow up as well. I give them a 4 because our relationship with our son has been renewed despite some complications during his stay there.
Our family owes so much to the good people at Project Patch and the program! Our son graduated from their program in 2002. It truly changed his life and the life of our family. I honestly do not think my son would be alive today if not for God blessing us with the amazing opportunity to be part of the program at Project Patch. We are still in contact with some of the staff and other students who attended. What a blessing to so many families!
No matter how bad your kids are please do not send them here I got sent here and was an allowed to talk was on an eating consequence and had to do their landscaping for 8 plus hours A-day with no therapeutic help whatsoever besides paper packets and counselors ignoring you when you need them you get locked in a Room, they don't help at all. They didn't let me talk to my parents the whole time and they use food as leverage here. The worst place anyone could ever go. Please find your kid somewhere else all kids and parents would agree who have experienced this horror. Health and welfare needs to shut this abomination lie of a company down. And my counselor was a 25 year old dude that talked to me all of 10 times while I was there for a year, there is no therapy here. I was better off getting help at an outpatient program. The counselors, staffs, and owners are all trash and liars trying to scam more people and break more young adults.
It s sad to see some of these nasty reviews on here. Some of the claims seem outlandish and quite ridiculous to the point it seems they are blaming other people for their own problems. I was a resident for a little over 18 months and always felt like the staff were really personally invested in the success of the youth. My counselor was amazing and always wanted what was best for me even when my behavior was not always the best. I still keep in touch with a few of the staff members to this day because I know that they are so happy to see me doing well all of these many years after I was in the program. Absolutely consider this place if you are looking for help for someone in your family. Only the refusal to accept the situation and try to become a better person would hinder the success of anyone going through the program. It s a Seventh Day Adventist organization, but the staff there don t try to force religion on you. Of course there are church services on Saturday, but they are not going to make anyone feel condemned for not adhering to religion.
My mom loves me enough to seek help when she was at her end. I had a lot of issues as a teen. I was at Patch for a couple years and graduated when I was 17. The experience was much more difficult for me until I wanted to change. Most of my progress happened in the last 8-10 months. I made many genuine relationships with the staff whom I felt actually had my best interests in mind. No, it wasn t always fun , I wasn t there for extended summer camp. The diet was different than I have ever had but I was probably my most healthy on it. It s amazing how healing the body can aide in mental health. I did a lot of dumb stuff and went out of my way to not conform. I learned accountability, kindness, how to express myself healthily, common thinking errors and most importantly... I developed a relationship with our almighty Father. I was able to catch up in schooling curriculum so that I could finish high school in a public school before I turned 18. The recipe for wellbeing is three part: spiritual, mental and physical. I found all three ingredients at Patch. I now have a wife and kids, own my home and served my county proudly. Yes, I had to do the work and make the decision to change but without that opportunity... my life would have been completely different today. Much thanks to God, mom and the staff at Patch!
Project Patch saved my life. I entered as a suicidal teen with nothing to live for, but I left with a will to live and an excitement for the future that I had never experienced. I am so grateful to my family for sending me to Patch. I went to another centre a year before Patch (only for around 6 weeks), but it did very little for me. I know that I would probably be dead now if wasn't for the hard work that was done at Patch. I don't mean to say that Project Patch is perfect, it is far from it, but it was what I needed. The staff were always there for me and loved me very much. Over my year there, I formed a family with the staff and my peers: connections that I hope to keep for the rest of my life. My Patch journey, like most, was winding. I was anti-social and self-harming when I arrived. I then ran away and received a long consequence, which I hated at the time, but I now see how helpful that time was in allowing me to truly reflect on my life. In the remaining months of my stay, I went from runaway to level three role model. I worked hard and took advantage of the help I was being offered. The Dialectical Behavioural Therapy I received and learned about was incredibly helpful. I had previously done Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, but found that DBT was a much better fit for me. Thanks to Patch I am a functioning person. I have returned to my family, where I am re-building the relationships that had been degraded. I have returned full time to school (something that I had not done for at least 3 years prior to Patch) and am excited to graduate and go on to University some day. The help I received from Patch, has impacted my life, and the lives of those around me so much. My time at Patch has inspired me, and I want to go on to be an Art Therapist and help other teens. Project Patch was never easy for me, or my family, but it was so worth it.
Best place ever. If i didn't go there I would be dead. I was there for a year and they helped me with responsibility, communication, problem solving, and skills for calming me down to use for the rest of my life. The staff are great, the food is great, and is set apart from the rest of the world letting you heal.
I wish that I could go on forever, but this place was so bizarre and traumatizing that I'm having a hard time finding the words. The marketing of PATCH, what their website makes it look like, is COMPLETELY different that how it actually is. My parents admitted to me that had they known what PATCH was really like, they would have never sent me here and still apologize to me for it. Your child will be denied an education, half the time that I was there we were given books and made to sit on the gym floor for hours, we weren't even allowed to sit in the classroom and we couldn't talk, at all. If we needed to use the restroom they make us write it on a piece of paper to ask them. I was locked in a "quiet room" for days for begging them to talk to my parents. I was forcibly medicated for depression that I didn't have, given pills that made me feel so sleepy and out of it that it was hard to walk. They told me if I didn't take them, I couldn't go home to my family for Christmas. And I was punished for acting tired from the medication and put on a consequence where I had to eat plain lentils and rice and a piece of bread three meals a day, for seven consecutive days. Those days could start over at any time if you were to upset a staff member during that period. I ate lentils and rice for two straight months during a consequence that they called "group closure". That being said, your child will be deprived of proper nutrition during their entire stay here. All while doing forced manual labor for hours a day. There is SO much more. I became close with a staff member while I was there, upon that person quitting PATCH years later, they got ahold of me to apologize for any systematic abuse that they contributed to while I was there. I saw my counselor Donna once a week for ten minutes if I was lucky, and she never once made me feel safe or understood. It was the opposite of a theraputic environment. Yes, there are nice people working here and there are bad people working here, and it is my belief that the nice people are just as brainwashed as they were trying to make us. Your child will never be able to tell you that there's something wrong going on, because they listen to our one ten minute phone call a week. Which can be taken away, by the way. The chick who runs the place, Coleen, is self centered and money hungry and does not actually care about the restoration of teens and their families whatsoever. If a family were to want to take their child out of this school, they have to pay for the whole 12 months, no exceptions. You literally sign your parental rights over for an entire year in the contract. My family and I were both very much deceived when it came to the way this "school" really was. Yes, I am thankful for the lessons that I learned there, but I'm sad I had to learn them the way that I did, in such a hostile, isolating, abusive environment.
Just no, do not send your kid(s) to the gulags of Siberia. Many of their staff are unprofessional and inexperienced. Your kid shall be deprived of nutritional food and surrounded by a occult Seventh Day/Christian organization. The expected hiring rate for staff is less than two years. So don't spend your thousands of dollars on something that will not benefit your teenager emotionally or mentally. Perhaps in the future PP could be revamped, but that is going to require something beyond what they have in place now. Some of this may be exaggerated to an extent, but know this, your kid will be in a worse state before he/she entered. God bless you, and all the best to your family!
I recommend project patch because when their is nothing else you can do for your child, a place to let them grow and be faced with their issues surrounded by people who care for them and support them to trust and love again. Also It s a great place for youth to be known and that is key to a lot of healing.
Project Patch is a place nestled in the heart of God s majestic wilderness where troubled teens can recover from struggles, addictions and heartache in a safe, loving Christian environment. Sometimes in this troubled , fast paced world, kids need a safe place to step back, get away from technology, and find themselves - Patch offers this and so much more - I wish every teen had the opportunity to learn the skills taught at Patch - I highly recommend Project Patch to anyone searching for answers for their family.
I had my daughter at Project Patch for 12 months. Project Patch located at beautiful location. The stuff at Garden Valley is very knowledgeable and caring. WA office would require you to sign 12 months contract.If you get sick or lay off, it won t matter, you still will be responsible for payments. They won t break contract even if 8-10 months was enough for your child. This is not about your child, this is about their contract. It was really hard to deal with office in WA: they made a lot of mistakes and don t take accountability for it. They didn t disclose some important information before you signed financial contract. No judgment just awareness. Peace out.
I did not have a decision about going to Patch, I had to. My parents sent me there out of desperation to heal our relationship. I fought hard when I first got there because I didn t think I needed to be there. After awhile I started realizing that I could fight or I could focus on my problems and how to fix them. I slowly changed my view and I started growing and changing for the better. It isn t about everyone else in your life and how bad they screw it up it s about you and what you need to change. We all have problems and I had to realize that I needed to focus on me. Project Patch helped me become a better me and taught me how to deal with the difficulties of life.
Please don't ever send your kid here. I could go on for days, but I'm just going to second most of the other reviews made AND inform you that a counselor there told me I was such an awful person that I must have enjoyed the sexual abuse I received as a seven year old. I was traumatized for a long time from my Project Patch experience and was worse after leaving for a LONG time. It's a miracle I still have faith and belief in God after being sent there, it's not a good place. At one point, a staff member hit me in the face with a soft ball and then told me to grow a pair when I cried for a few minutes because it hurt. Didn't really find it therapuric in any way lmao I would like to add that, at the time that I was forced to go to PP, I DID need help. I was broken and my family really needed help being repaired. However, PP is NOT a place that helps troubled youth or repairs families, I wasn't even allowed to talk to my parents for more than 10-20 minutes a week, if I was lucky. I was so degraded by staff that I was made to believe that, by the time I left, I was an irreparable object. I was so much more lost for years after PP than I ever was before.
I couldn't begin to write a detailed enough description on my feelings about project patch, it would take a book! I graduated, after 19 long months in the program, all the way back in 2004 at 14 years old. 15 years later and I still have their support. The staff here are incredible, I know a lot has changed over the years but I can say without a doubt that Stephanie and Colleen (who are still there) are 2 of the greatest women I know and I have to credit them, as well as Bob, Marge and Sharon for who I am today. I was certainly not the easiest child to care for and I'm sure I made their job much harder for them at times but these people never gave up on me. In hindsight I think that's what saved me. The program is great too but it's the love these staff show, unconditionally, that turns our scars into stars! I couldn't thank them enough for all they did for me and continue to do for so many other struggling teens. No child will be thrilled to come to the ranch lol but I can honestly say as an adult, that I'm extremely grateful for my time spent there. I still use a lot of what I learned at patch, i'm a mom now and find myself teaching my own children these lessons too so it was definitely worth it for me to attend Oh! Huge plus. .. The campus is gorgeous right on the river surrounded by beautiful mountains, they do a ton of outdoor activities, I even got to go on a 7 day backpacking trip with patch! We went rafting a lot and would take day trips to the Indian potholes or to go to Idaho city, they are always finding a good time to reward the kids with!
I was forced onto a plane from Washington under the assumption that I was going on a family vacation. Once picked up from the airport by a PATCH employee, we drove to the ranch and I was abandoned for the whole of a year. Many, many traumatic things happened to me here. I was tied to another girl by my wrist and we were forced to go to the bathroom, sleep, and live together without any issues (as you can imagine, this was hard). But what made it even more crazy is that if any of us girls made the workers angry, we were put on a no talking rule. It was only allowed to be broke on sabbath . I apparently was so bad that they felt the need to take me out into the woods in the middle of an Idaho winter and forced me to cook lentils over a fire pit. Catch was, I had to make sure that they were completely cooked, eaten and cleaned up within an hour. Impossible. I had to stay out there for 2 weeks with other girls who were just as completely broken down by their system as I was. I had to find my own log and pallet to keep my sleeping bag off of the ground. At night, we had to run naked to the staff cabin to get our medicine/toothbrushes. I m leaving so much out because it is just so hard to talk about and it has been a long time. My life is much better now with my beautiful family. Please do not send your children here. It is a miracle that I still believe in God after this whole experience.
I want to go back and live there again. Made me feel like I was actually a cool person to be around.
