By Ember Herrick
Therapists at the Cascade Center for Family Growth in Orem have been fighting to help kids who suffer with attachment disorders for more than a decade.
But a petition has Cascade therapists fighting a different battle to keep their center open and their licenses to practice.
A 58-page petition filed by the Department of Professional Licensing accuses Cascade therapists Larry VanBloem and Jennie Gwilliam of 14 ethical and professional violations. The controversy stems from the center?s use of holding therapy used to treat children suffering from Reactive Attachment Disorder.
As a BYU student studying psychology, VanBloem got his first exposure to children with RAD while doing a social work internship.
?There was this group of kids that had a certain spectrum of problems that were not progressing with play therapy, reading them books, tough parenting, or love and logic parenting,? VanBloem said. ?Nothing worked, and I kept saying, ?There has to be something for these children because if they grow up this way, that is really terrible.??
VanBloem went to other licensed therapists and his supervisor searching for solutions for his RAD patients and their frazzled parents.
?I was told some kids you just can?t really help,? VanBloem said.
VanBloem refused to accept that prognosis. He received his masters? degree in social work and became a licensed clinical social worker in Utah in 1991.
That same year, the Department of Children and Family Services hired two therapists from Colorado to train a group of Utah therapists to perform coercive restrain therapy at Rivendell Care Center in West Jordan.
VanBloem said the therapy is designed to get children with attachment problems to talk about the trauma they have experienced in their past by expressing bottled up feelings with the therapist and primary caregiver.
?I only do this type of therapy with careful diagnosis,? VanBloem said. ?The only reason I do it is because I know that is what that kid needs and I know they will keep acting out the horror unless we are able to help them open it up, show it.?
Restraint therapy is currently under fire by opponents who deem the practice child abuse, but VanBloem maintains that the treatment is effective.
?We have to restrain when a child in therapy is a danger to me or to themselves,? VanBloem said. ?Typically we avoid restraint, but if the child gets into ?big anger feelings? and acts violently, I don?t let them hurt me. They feel bad after.?
VanBloem said he and his colleagues have modified the treatment over the years as they have learned what works best with their patients.
?I think that some of the things that were done were just what we knew how to do then, it wasn?t something I was ever really comfortable with, but I knew it was changing lives,? VanBloem said. ?I am thankful we had the techniques back then and I am thankful we can do it in a much simpler and milder way now.?
According to VanBloem, for some children with severe attachment disorders, holding therapy is the only thing that works.
?Trauma is recorded in the hippocampus of the brain,? VanBloem said. ?If we can?t get in there and open up those memories and open up those feelings, then how can we address what happened and those things that are locked away??
Mallory Alderink and her son Jeremiah have both undergone holding therapies to help them deal with issues from their pasts. Alderink said her son often just lies on a mat or on the therapist?s lap and talks with the therapist during a session.
?These days, within seconds, Jeremiah is just crying that sorrow out and most of it goes back to birth mother and loss issues. ? The holding therapy hits those feelings and gets those feelings flooding out of him,? Alderink said. ?It hurts to feel that pain again, but it is a relief to get to the bottom of it. He loves the relief that he feels.?
Alderink said her son is in the middle of therapy, but that she has noticed her son make improvements.
?I have seen Jeremiah stabilize since we have been here,? Alderink said. ?He is learning to identify his feelings and express those feelings in a more appropriate way.?
Therapists at Cascade use holding therapy to get children to express the feelings they experienced when they were traumatized, while experiencing a positive resolution by receiving acceptance and love from the therapist and mother, VanBloem said.
?In doing this, the child realizes, this time I felt this way, I was loved, hugged, I wasn?t left alone crying in bed wondering if I can ever be safe,? VanBloem said.
The therapy is aimed at teaching children that there are adults they can trust.
?To the outside world when they see adoptive parents having problems they say, ?I haven?t known a problem yet that a little love didn?t solve, what is wrong with these parents,? but they just don?t understand our kids, they don?t understand the severity of the trauma they have gone through,? Alderink said. ?Instead of saying all they need is a little bit of love and a little bit of discipline, people need to realize these kids take completely different parenting techniques.?
Charly Risenmay is the mother of ten and attends every therapy session with her three adopted children who receive treatment at Cascade.
?We went looking and we found therapy that works, where my child feels safe and nurtured and loved and she can unload and get all that out of her heart so there is room for the love to come in,? Risenmay said.
Risenmay says that after years of play therapy, hospitalization and medication, holding therapy is the only thing that works for two of her adopted kids. ?I would never allow anyone to hurt my children,? Risenmay said. ?They are already hurt, and traumatized, somebody has already done the worst imaginable things to them that could be done, and I am not allowing that to happen again.?
In response to DOPL?s allegations, the DCFS has cancelled its contract with Cascade to provide counseling for children adopted through the state, dealing a huge financial blow to Cascade.
Opponents of holding therapy claim that the therapists performing it are financially motivated, but VanBloem says that his stand on holding therapy has actually hurt him financially.
?If this is about money, why don?t I preserve my license and just walk away?? VanBloem asked. ?Why do I do a therapy that is so heart wrenching and difficult for me too, not just the kids? Why don?t I just lease a room and get shelves full of toys and just watch kids play? Wouldn?t that be a lot easier??
VanBloem said he has already spent between 20 and 30 thousand dollars over the last several months to defend himself, while never raising treatment prices to pay for lawyers.
?Sadly, most of the people that come here dig the money out of their pockets and borrow against their own homes because they love their kids, so I keep (treatment costs) down to the rock bottom,? VanBloem said. ?We are not making money. This is not about money, this is about children that need help and we are going to fight all the way to the end because we believe in it.?
DOPL spokesman Scott Thompson said the investigation of Cascade had been going on for several months before the petition was released.
But in fact, the allegations date back not months, but years ? to 1994.
Thompson said he could not comment on whether Cascade had been investigated before, but VanBloem said that they had been investigated for charges filed on behalf of a child named ?Tammy? for a year in 1997.
VanBloem said DOPL recommended he get a massage therapy license because he was performing mild massage with fingertips and palms as part of the holding therapy, but said they would not be proceeding against his license in any way. Five years after the initial investigation where no wrongdoing was found, ?Tammy? is still named in DOPL?s new petition. ?I don?t understand why DOPL is reviewing my license for the same case twice,? VanBloem said. ?When you knew it all back then, why is it being brought forward right now??
VanBloem says three of the children named in the petition never filed complaints with the state and a fourth recanted months ago.
?The more intense therapies were in the early nineties and they were done according to how I was trained to do them, but if a line was crossed, it was crossed then and it is certainly not being crossed now,? VanBloem said.
VanBloem said he realizes that DOPL has an obligation to research complaints and that the allegations against his center are serious.
?If I read this stuff, I would be alarmed too,? VanBloem said. ?There was never any slapping, there was never any hair pulling. We were trained to do some tickling but it was never of a horrific kind.?
VanBloem and Gwilliams said the allegations against them are grave mischaracterizations of the work they do, and in some cases are lies.
Thompson said Gwilliams and VanBloem will get a chance to have their case heard and ask questions at a hearing later this month by a professional peer review board made up of six social workers and one public citizen.
?We have laid very low. ? But things have gone too far and now we have to speak up,? Gwilliams said. ?I am confident the truth will come out.?