To Whom It May Concern,
We are writing this letter to recommend that you take advantage of the services of Homeward Bound (HB). Our experience with HB has been extremely positive.
Our 16-year old son completed a 14-month residential treatment program that included a transition plan involving Homeward Bound. He was in treatment mainly for flunking school, vandalizing, stealing, bullying, lying, not taking responsibility for his actions, and being oppositional. His residential treatment program was successful in addressing these issues while in a controlled environment.
However, HB helped both us as parents and our son deal with the realities of life after treatment. I fully admit to being skeptical that HB would provide any benefit. My skepticism quickly dissolved after meeting with our coach. Her professionalism and vast counseling experience was apparent as she helped us to improve our parenting style to meet our son’s challenges and to prepare for the typical post-treatment phases (honeymoon, testing, stability). In our case, she was uncannily correct in predicting the timeline of those phases. So when our son entered his “testing phase” and subsequently was caught shoplifting from Walmart, we were prepared. That preparedness helped our family successfully navigate through the incident in a positive way.
Our HB coach was able to connect with our son such that he trusted her to be a support. She was understanding, knowledgeable, sympathetic, and yet unyielding (not wimpy) in helping him to make decisions to improve his life. She also was helpful to us as a support in verifying the correctness of our thoughts/decisions/actions or providing sound rationale as to why changing our ways would create better results and a happier home life.
We are now about four months post treatment. Our son is doing well in school, is making better decisions, and is feeling happier. We too are happier in our relationship with our son. We don’t expect a mistake-free future, but with our coach’s counseling we anticipate fewer challenges and more productive ways of dealing with inevitable setbacks. We highly recommend both Homeward Bound and their coaches to you.
Best wishes,
Phillip & Heather Goold
Utah
