EBAC is a very small day treatment program: besides the regular academics, they offer therapeutic support for children with emotional problems.
My son attends EBAC as he has an IEP for depression and anxiety. He loves it there. He gets to go to the art room once a week (out of which all manner of ceramic and Fimo goodness flows, as well as computer games and paint and such) and have therapy on site once a week, and save up good behavior points to buy things at the "store" once a week, and be taught by a brilliant man (Gil) who also has drama experience and puts it to excellent use, and... he just looves it.
The school is really tiny: there are two classrooms, each with about eight kids, and each class of eight kids has a teacher and two social workers, so the adult-child ratio is awesome. They know how to handle emotional and behavioral problems and, more importantly, how to teach kids how to work with their own problems. The director, Charlotte, is also an MFT, which helps tremendously, and the therapists are excellent.
The one thing that I am not entirely happy with is that because it's a day treatment program, they have very strict confidentiality. I think that's very important both personally and legally, but since I am essentially a queer stepparent and have no legal relationship to my kid, it means that they can't tell me much of anything about their work with him or how he's doing unless they feel strongly that it is important to his treatment for me to know it. This is more a problem with our family structure than with the school, but I do feel that sometimes they err on the side of being too cautious - for example, jumping to assume that since his birth mother seemed annoyed about something to do with me, she must not want them to talk to me about him anymore and they can't until they've made sure she really really is still okay with it. Of course, it's better for him that they err on that side than on the opposite side... but I wish they didn't err on either side, or at least that it was clearer to me what I was and was not allowed to know! At day's end, though, what is important is my son's care and education, and all the rest of it is just details.
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