FamilyLight^sm will be publishing comments on as many programs as possible. We invite comments and contributions from others. When this website has fully developed its own following, we fully expect that the addition of comments  will expand geometrically.   We currently do not plan to include articles about programs by those programs, (programs are encouraged tocontribute on "Topics of Interest").  Schools and programs that want to write about themselves and get it published should submit that to  Struggling Teens.  Eventually we hope to link all such articles to our mentions of your school or program.  Upon request of the school or program we will get the link in place more quickly. 

Program people should study our "Programs and More" section to see the potential impact of this website as it develops.  The guidelines section is now complete.   We are now developing a detailed questionnaire for programs based upon the guidelines and will post the responses to those questionnaires on the web.  The questionnaire will focus on comparing your program to those guidelines.  Please be thinking about that.

Historically, referring professionals' best access to information about your schools and programs has been marketing tours and promotional materials.  Those of us who follow up on our referrals learn the real story after we make our first placement, which is always a risky step.  One of our intentions is to obtain and provide to others more in-depth information and documentation about the programs in order to lessen that risk. 

As one step in correcting that problem, sometime late in early 2009, we will make a downloadable questionnaire available from this page.  We have begun developing that. You can get an advance, off the record peek at that while we assemble the pieces on line by clicking here.  This questionnaire will call for a great deal of information about schools, programs and other services. In terms of space covered, the emphasis will be on consistency with our guidelines.  We will ask for PDF copies of all licenses, certifications, and other credentials claimed in your responses to our questionnaire and in any marketing materials we find. While we will give you an opportunity to provide us with additional information that is not for publication, your signed response to the questionnaire will be placed on our website in PDF form.  We will invite all of our viewers to call our attention to any discrepancies between their experiences and your claims. You will always have the opportunity to post any replies you wish to offer to anything we publish about you. We welcome your correction of any factual errors on our part. 

The PDFs of the returned questionnaires will be protected by our copyright. We want to be very clear that we do not expect anyone to be in 100% compliance with our guidelines but we want to see the profession/industry as a whole move generally in the direction of those guidelines as they will continuously be refined and updated.  

We will give favored treatment, to the extent of timing and notification of publication to those schools and programs that cooperate with us.  That is, what we and other contributors say about any program will flow from objective facts, our prior experience with the program or program owners, similar experience of other contributors, and, most of all, the degree of correspondence between how the program operates and our guidelines.  How much time we devote to getting out messages about programs we report positively, where we choose to visit, and where we refer our individual clients will all depend upon your degree of cooperation with getting us accurate information.

Comments on programs that are not cooperative with responding to the questionnaire will simply be posted at our convenience.  When we do report on such programs, we will attempt to give credit where it is due.  We will not change our opinion of the quality of a  school or program or how we report it because of cooperation or non-cooperation with our information gathering process.  However even very best programs that do not respond will not be on our priority list for reporting until we have fully gotten information onto the web from those schools and programs that do .  When we do report them our reports will give them their due.

Disclaimer: No  program review, no matter how positive, is a blanket endorsement. No criticism is a blanket condemnation.  When we express our level of confidence in a school or program, that is our subjective opinion with which others might reasonably disagree.  When we assert something as fact, we have done our best to be accurate, but we cannot guarantee that all of our information is accurate and up to date. When we address compliance with our guidelines, you need to remember that these are only OUR guidelines -- not guidelines from an official source.  We have also set the bar very high, and do not expect any school or program to be in total compliance.  It is not appropriate to draw a conclusion of impropriety (or even failure to live up to conventional wisdom) from our lack of confidence in a school or program or from less than perfect conformity to our guidelines.  Some will say we expect too much. Readers are responsible for verifying accuracy of information supplied here prior to acting upon it. We are not responsible for inaccuracies.

Last updated  Febrary 9, 2009