Yes. We are committed to the idea that you have a right to access the services you pay for every month, so we bill most major plans directly. We don’t hand you a “super bill” and ask you to turn it into insurance. We do our part to help keep things affordable. We do require you to have a credit card on file to cover what insurance does not, and we ask that you contact your company before the first appointment to be sure you know what your benefits are before incurring a “surprise bill.”

We avoid waitlists at all costs. While our staff are very busy, we staff our office so that we can get you in about as soon as you can turn around the online intake materials. If we reach capacity we hire additional staff.  

We do. However, our office is the primary provider of integrative treatment for children and teens in Douglas County and we have a sizable clientele from Topeka, Johnson County, and the surrounding area. Most of our staff who see kids, do work later in the day, however, the demand greatly exceeds the capacity. We have come up with a semi-formal “sharing plan” that prevents any one child/teen from missing school all of the time. However, to make that work, all children/teens must miss school part of the time — typically about once a month — in order to be seen some of the time after school. This is the only way we’ve found to be fair to everyone. Adults who want to be seen at our office will often need to come during the day while school is in session. When school is in recess, we reverse the priorities and allow adults to come during the evening. 

Yes. The law says that until your child turns 18, you can read his/her treatment records. But if that is your intent, we won’t see your child, except in the most extenuating circumstances. We want to engage families in their child’s treatment and expect you to be a helpful participant, but no child or teen will share their honest thoughts and feelings if they know that will be relayed to their parents. This is, in fact, the number one complaint young people share with us about past therapies. Our typical arrangement — and it has worked well for many years — is to discuss with the child what we’d like to share with the parents and then, as a team, sit down and talk through it. 

Yes you can. However, be very thoughtful about what you share. For anyone middle school and up, it is better to come to the session with your child and share your concerns openly. You might want to discuss ahead of time with therapist how to do that in a constructive way. But when parents send an email with a lot of information about the child, and then ask the therapist not to discuss it with his/her client, we have formed what is referred to as a double-bind. There are exceptions. Occasionally a parent wants to share something in their own history relevant to the child’s treatment, or something the child is not developmentally ready to know, but on the whole, children will immediately distrust both the parent and the therapist if they believe a lot of back-channel communication is going on. Our goal is to improve communication using the philosophy that everything shared should be “kind, true, and necessary.” We welcome input from parents, but want to be sure everyone is on the same page before it rolls in.

There is a lot to know about this and you will likely discuss it during your intake session. Our goal is to reveal exactly what your child wants revealed — particularly if they are a teen — and no more. However, if any minor is being harmed, is harming someone else, is at substantial risk from sexual conduct or serious substance abuse, or is at notable risk of suicide that goes beyond ideation, we will contact you. We may also contact Kansas DCF if there is reason to believe the child is being abused sexually, physically or emotionally. We do not do this without informing you first, unless we believe the child is in such a state of risk that informing family would be dangerous to the child — which is a rare situation. However, the winds have shifted in Kansas and we are not afforded much latitude in making mandated reports now. Providers have received licensure sanctions for a perceived failure to report and DCF has itself filed most of those complaints. So we are required to err very far on the side of caution, regardless of our perspective on your case.

This is a complicated subject because there are lots of reasons people want to change providers. Some of them are very good reasons. Other times, the client may feel uncomfortable in a way that could actually help them make necessary changes. Our policy is that you contact either Dr. Wes (who facilitated your initial intake) or our Clinical Director, Jessica Allison. Care Coordination can give you her email address. State your reason for wanting to make the change with as much detail as possible. We’ll email with you about this and try to reach a decision that is clinically best for you. This helps us understand what is going on and coach our staff as necessary and also allows you agency in your treatment options.   

Contact care coordination and they’ll have you sign a release of information. If you want the records released to you, we have a form for that. Because these kinds of records serve a number of diverse purposes they aren’t really very useful for the client and can sometimes be unhelpful to read. For example, to bill insurance, we have to show medical necessity, and that requires us to emphasize every facet of your problems and minimize your strengths to justify treatment. Of course we are truthful, but the focus is always on what’s wrong with you, because if it were not, the insurance company might well recoup the payment on audit. There is also a great deal of jargon in records that may need a lot of explaining. You do have the right to access the records, but we suggest you do so mindfully and preferably with your therapist.

We process about 75 to 100 requests for services per month, so it’s generally no practical to meet with a therapist beforehand, nor can we see you in an professional capacity if you don’t go through our informed consent process. We also discourage parents from coming in to discuss their child before the child has met the therapist. If you have information you’d like to share about the child, there is ample opportunity to do that during the written intake process, and you should include as much pertinent detail as possible on the Ask About Services form. If we meet with you or your child for an intake and determine that you are not within our scope of practice, we will not charge you or your insurance company for the session and we will not open a chart and make you a client. This happens no more than one percent of the time, but we are careful to only take on cases within our expertise, and sometimes we won’t know that before we issue an intake invitation. In that case, we’re likely to have suggestions for other offices to contact for a better-fit service.

No. Unless you are the parent or legal guardian of the prospective client, we cannot offer services. If your son or daughter is 18 or older, they must complete the Ask About Services form themselves and they must provide a private email address. There are no exceptions to this (except cases of guardianship) due to ethical codes of conduct across all professions. You also cannot volunteer anyone to cover the costs of treatment, including an ex-spouse, unless that person contacts our office to put a credit card on file.