Parents How to Prepare for Adolescent Transport
The most common type of adolescent transports are in-home. If in-home is your plan, SafePassage offers the following suggestions to help you make the transport the most successful.
There are three key factors in preparing for your adolescents transport are:
- Keep everything at home as normal as possible,
- Do not tell your Adolescent what you are planning, and
- Keep your adolescent safe until professional help arrives.
The hardest part about the Transport is waiting for it to occur. Parents who have not used our Professional Transport Service tend to have increased anxiety leading up to the scheduled day. It is important to set aside this anxiety as best as you are able and stay focused on keeping your household in a normal operating mode. Normal for each in-crisis household may be a bit different but the bottom line is that you do not want to alert your Adolescent that life as they know it is going to change.
If you have other children in your home keep their routines as normal as possible and above all where they are concerned do not take them into your confidence and let them know what you are planning. The decision you have made to use our Professional Transport Service is a private decision between parents which should stay between parents until after the Transport has taken place. SafePassage encourages each of the Families we serve to do what they believe is best for their family but in our experience we have found that siblings tend to not keep secrets from one another.
Keeping your adolescent safe is harder than it sounds. We know that you are certainly concerned your adolescent’s physical safety and that is certainly a priority, however, your at-risk son or daughter must be kept safe from uncovering information that divulges your decision to use a Transport Service and reacting in a way that would be detrimental to their wellbeing. It is our experience at SafePassage that it is always better to wait until our Professional Transport Team is in place at your home
Communication between SafePassage and the parent(s) occurs in one of three ways:
- Telephone
- Fax
In order to effectively provide confidential communication, SafePassage asks that parents provide a secure telephone line, preferably one or both parent cell phone number(s) – this allows private voice mail messages, if necessary. SafePassage Adolescent Services ® will never intentionally leave a voice mail on a shared phone line without prior permission.
SafePassage encourages the families we serve to password protect their email. After the initial telephone conversation, email is commonly used for communication purposes. Password protected email and deleting the history on your Internet browser are effective means to keep your intentions confidential. Most adolescents are computer savvy and several of our Agents have been told by adolescents that they often track their parents online activity.
Medications should be assembled in a clear self-sealing, zipper style plastic bag. The plastic bag should be large enough to contain all of the adolescents medications, an instruction sheet with the name of medication, dosage and time clearly written out – make sure the bags completely zips closed. Medications are to be given directly to our Transport Team when they arrive.
Some short-term or wilderness programs often require only a few basic personal items to be sent along with your adolescent. Many of these programs do not allow a backpack on their campus so to use a shopping bag or grocery bag to carry these personal items works well.
Long-term schools or programs often require large quantities of clothing and bedding for your adolescent. If these items can be purchased, packed and stored away from the watchful eye of your adolescent and if your adolescent’s transport is facilitated by ground travel only, it may be conducive for our Transport Team to quickly load the luggage upon their arrival. However, if your adolescents transport involves air travel the luggage containing personal belongings that your adolescent will need at the destination school or program should be shipped in advance.
For the safety and wellbeing of your adolescent, SafePassage does not take checked luggage. Our Transport Team will be able to take one small carry-on duffel-bag with a shoulder strap or back pack that will fit under the seat in front of your adolescent on the airplane. For the short amount of time that your adolescent is with our Transport Team there are relatively few possessions that they will need, so a small bag with one change of clothes is all that we will manage.
Eye wear, orthodontic appliances and other special needs items should be brought to the attention of the Transport Team when they arrive. It is most helpful for parents to prepare a short list of these type items that may be in the bedroom with your adolescent so that the Transport Team will have the opportunity to quickly collect these items. Remember when you are packing for your adolescents departure, do not pack up personal items that they will readily notice as missing. Keeping things at home as normal as possible means just that. Adolescents are very much aware of their own possessions and their internal alarm goes off when their things are disturbed by someone else.
For example, one adolescent female ran away the day before her scheduled Transport. When she was picked up and transported she confided to her Transport Team that she noticed her shampoo was missing from the shower and that alerted her that her parents were making plans for her. They are more aware of their surroundings than you may think.
SafePassage Adolescent Services ®
also provides Facility Transports from Hospitals, Institutes, Juvenile Detention Centers, Schools and Programs and other Facilities around the world to approved short-term and long-term Schools, Programs and Facilities in the United States. Logistics for all In-home Transports and Facility Transports are handled in-house.
For further information please call us toll free: (800)811-7911. Help can be on its way sooner than you think.
