My daughter was a resident at the Joy House for about 1 year. Within that year she was able to get her depression and anxiety under control and have a better outlook on life. She was able to graduate high school early and she excelled in the school there. It's very hard for a family to find help for their teenager and be able to afford it. The Joy House made that possible for us.Not only did my daughter get the help she needed, but as a parent I learned a great deal about parenting and about being a better Christian.
DO NOT send your child here. I was sent here and stayed for 3 weeks before being pulled out and let me say it is not a good place. First of all my mom had to call 911 to even get me in the car to go there. When you get there they have the other kids teach you how to very deep clean whatever room you have. My first chore was in the living room (changes every 2 weeks) i had to clean the front and back porch along with the guest bathroom VERY thoroughly in the morning and afternoon .Besides the cleaning its very traumatic to be forced to leave your home and go live with strangers and a bunch of people you do not know. The school was not helpful even a little bit, you are given packets for every subject and a minimum of pages to do for each packet with teachers who dont know the info and mostly cant help you. They also had some weird rules about sugar etc. This is all im going to talk about for now but i am going to leave another review in hopes to help other people. (AP)
Our family was in crisis. We were raising our granddaughter and when she went from middle school to high school she made different friends and began getting into trouble and making poor choices. We tried so many things to get her turned around and back on track. Nothing was working.
We heard about The Joy House and decided that this program might be what was needed to get her turned around. As Christians, my husband and I wanted to find help that was Christ centered. The Joy House is a “reset” opportunity…. A place where our teen was separated from social media, negative friends, and other outside influences. The house parents were loving but firm. Our teen learned to follow the rules and not talk back. She wasn’t mistreated in any way. The on site school provided the opportunity for her to work at her own pace. She even began taking an interest in her classes again and often was on the honor roll. The Joy House offers weekly counseling to the residents. Our child connected with the counselor and was able to work through some trauma that had occurred in her life. The counselor offered parenting classes that allowed parents to meet together with other parents and be guided through healthy parenting strategies.
The Joy House provided the structure that was needed. We had weekly phone calls from our granddaughter and she came home on the weekends. Our granddaughter thrived in this environment. She was able to graduate early and will start college in the fall. She rededicated her life to Christ and has a positive outlook on her future. We are so thankful for The Joy House and the changes that occurred in our whole family.
Incredible people with incredible hearts providing hope for families in the midst of the storms! So much valuable wisdom gained during the time we worked with them. So thankful family's have options when everything seems to be coming apart at the seams!!
I got there and immediately was loved. I couldn’t have had better house parents. I was so lucky to get into the house I did because they genuinely loved me and cared about me. They took care of us like they do their own child. Even when we treated them horribly and disappointed them they still said they loved us. You can’t get that anywhere else. Mr Darren was the best person to talk to. He never criticized, he listened and gave advice. The teachers are absolutely amazing. Ms.Robin would sit there with me for hours until I understand my math and did the same with every other student. The houses are beautiful and feel like a real home. To me, mr. Chase and Mrs Veronica are like second parents. Unlike most places, at the joy house you are treated like a actual person, not a patient.
Our family was devastated when we reached out to the JH. We had so little hope and what hope we had left was poured out to the staff at JH. Unfortunately, this is not a facility that can truly handle difficult kids. After four months, our child was discharged due to noncompliance. He wasn't kicked out for violence, drugs, sexual acting out, or destruction of property. He was kicked out because he was throwing a temper tantrum about having to leave the basketball court. This was so mild in our minds, after all that we had been through. To make matters worse, we were never invited to a meeting regarding his discharge. There was no phone call. There was no "contract" or plan to face his removal. We received a text message from the lead counselor to let us know our son was no longer allowed in this "program." It's also important to note that during these four months, we were never engaged in family therapy, all but 3 of the parent meetings we were supposed to attend were cancelled for various reasons and the few parent sessions we did attend were a powerpoint presentation with no interaction between the families. I had a difficult time getting anyone other than the house parents to communicate with me. I am a licensed mental health provider and there was no shred of real counseling or evidence-based treatment offered to my son. We are Christians, and we believe in the Bible, but offering one or two verses of scripture to a hurting and struggling teen once a week is not counseling.
Believe me when I say our family was deeply hurting when we went through the lengthy process to apply to JH. We were praying for a lifeline. We were overjoyed when we believed this organization would "partner" with us to help our child. They did not have the skills, training or tools to handle a difficult child. This was a devastating blow to our family and I hope no one else has to experience what we have gone through.
Parents i’m BEGGING you please do not send your children here! i was here for almost two years, and this place gave me severe trauma, ptsd and more issues than i had before coming here. I was constantly body shammed by my house mom and told i needed to loose weight even though i was under 120lbs and was a size 0 in jeans !!! she even used to deny me meals as a punishment and laugh and say “ it’s ok, you need to loose a few pounds anyways”. I was also told that my SA from my childhood was my fault and that i had nothing to offer my future husband, and was referred to as “a used tissue”. I even watched our house parents OD my friend on her antidepressants and encouraged her to harm/kill herself. i could go on and on with more events that took place here, but please just don’t send your children here.
My daughter just finished at The Joy House. It was truly a lifesaver and blessing for our family. She wasn't always happy to be there, but the tears shed when she left showed me that she had built great relationships with staff there. The highlights for her were the counseling and the school. She still says that she wishes she could go there for school next year. If your teens are struggling, and you are in their area, please look into The Joy House. We are so thankful that we did. We see a huge change in our daughter, and our whole family now has strategies to better deal with the issues that caused us to seek out help in the first place. I know that she has a bright future ahead..... before The Joy House I didn't know if that would be the case.
I think the saddest part about this place is the directors and people in charge truly think they are doing God's work. Not only is this place in the isolated from the real world, but so is their mindsets. You will see reviews talking about the "Child Labor". Their claims to this are for the most part pretty valid. There is one thing having to do some chores around the house, but I know of some kids spending hours every single day in the summer doing manual labor in fields and in the woods. The education your kid will get is from Ultra-Conservative 70's Sunday school curriculum. Absolute garbage. I am no progressive but what I was learning was a joke. I remember seeing the girl's house parents and them seeming a little more acceptant, maybe the fact they were older and looked like they had a lot more wisdom. But even still, the only way both house parents felt like they could actually "change" the issues these poor kids had, were to belittle and demean them to the edge of suicide. My roommate attempted suicide while I was sleeping. We woke up with him gone and "sent away for more help". God knows where that kid went. The house parents contributed to the demeaning and making fun of kids who felt out of place. Even when I took part of it, it would be because for once I wasn't the kid who the house parents made feel like crap. There was no real connection, we lived with more anxiety and stress than any high schooler should live with. I'm a lover for music, but that was strictly against the rules to listen to, even at home. My day consisted of being in a wooden cubicle facing a wall, working on my bs education for 8 hours a day by myself. It would be hard to work, so I would stare out the window for hours just regretting every decision I made to get me here. It was punishment, not spiritual rehabilitation. I missed my family so much. The leaders would be so judgmental and critical of any world view that didn't fit their Southern Baptist views. Their ideology was God's word to them. I guarantee you the amount of kids who have been through this place will resent God way more than any one or two that had spritual growth. I first hand watched the "principal" yell and call my friend an Idiot, multiple times, and just yell and yell at him. I was yelled at, and was demeaned into submission for what they were saying. This place needs serious change, change of leadership, house parents, curriculum, and belief statements. This whole idea of Joyhouse could work with change, but an experience here at this time is something you will regret doing to your kid. Keep looking for other options, don't take their word for what they offer, Christians can still deceive you. I will say the only thing I took from this place is to be so much more understanding to people I meet in the world, and acceptant. I also will never take for granted what I have in my life, cause living here will break you down and build you into the kind of man THEY want you to be, not who God wants you to be. It has been a couple years since I left, and the whole experience left a horrible scar on both me and my family. Don't send anyone here, just expose the truth.
A few years ago, our family had a unique need for some intense counseling with the end goal being a restorative relationship with our teenage daughter. We sought out several possible paths and were given a recommendation to look into what the Joy House could offer us. I gave the program director, Steve Lowe, a call and he was very kind and gracious and guided us through the process of bringing our family through the residential program.
Our daughter was in this program for about 18 months and we had weekly counseling both with and without her. The Director of Residential Therapy, Darren, spent many hours with us both in an educational setting and also in family counseling to help us rebuild the broken relationships which had taken years to deteriorate. Mr. Ron and Ms. Robin in the school were also critical in helping our daughter get caught up on missed schooling while also giving her the care, attention, and love she so needed at this time in her life.
Fast forward a few years and our daughter has finished school and is living a productive life with healthy relationships. We are blessed by seeing her often and our family is stronger today than ever before. The combined efforts of those at the Joy House along with the tools we learned while being a part of the program were critical in getting us to this point. We are grateful and blessed for having been a part of it, and I’m happy to answer any questions people might have if they are considering doing something similar.
My first year at the joy house was absolute hell. The two house parents also had two daughters. They are the house parents now AGAIN. but they had left while I was still admitted. My first year I can remember being belittled yelled at and forced into manual labor as a form of conversion therapy. They have strict rules that completely isolate you from anyone besides your parents. As a young girl who had never gotten in trouble with the law (at most I just had some defiance issues) I felt completely out of place there. There were some girls there who had worse problems than I did but the treatment of all of these young individuals was really horrendous. I can remember distinctly one time I was screamed at and yelled at for supposedly leaving a popsicle wrappers on the counter. It had been in the house parents daughter who did but they screamed at me in front of everyone and told me that they knew I was in there for lying and I needed to tell the truth. It hasn’t even been my rapper but whether or not it was it’s nothing to belittle and berate someone in front of all of their peers for. The House mother would deliberately turn girls against each other and make fun of girls behind their back‘s to the other girls. I remember how much I hated it there when she was there that family completely broke my spirit with their hate. Another huge thing that comes to mind was when I went to their new house as they were planning on leaving the joy house. They took all the girls there with them and we went on a walk on their new property. I was in the lead walking with their daughters and we got back to their house early. Their daughters invited me into their house to use the restroom because I had to pee so badly. When they caught up and saw that I was in their house without them they screamed at me and strip search me in front of everyone to ensure that I hadn’t stolen anything of theirs. I was just in my bra and panties in front of her husband and everyone else. I don’t know about y’all but that seems illegal. I wasn’t going to post a review about that family but I saw that they were the house parents again and I can’t imagine the horror that those girls are having to go through. Every door is locked snacks and food are monitored and watched. The deep cleaning that you have to do in the manual labor that you have to do in order to impress all of the directors friends that are throwing money in his pockets is honestly nothing short of child labor.
When the second house parents came it was like a dream come true. They had a disabled son and I connected with him greatly. They were kind compassionate and forgiving and of course the directors didn’t like that. I remember at one point they had gone and got tiny little tattoos that was a ribbon in honor of a disease that the house mom had. The directors belittled them and yelled at them and told them that they were setting a bad example when in reality all they showed us was love that we needed. They were a true light in that place and honestly if they hadn’t showed up I probably wouldn’t be alive today.
In conclusion does the joy house work? Definitely not. There have never been any true success stories. Maybe one or two but the amount of money that’s going into that establishment for them to have so little “ life-changing results“ seems like all a big scam for publicity and money in their pockets. The only reason I’m doing well today is because I chose to overcome the kind of people that were there the kind of people that use Christianity as an excuse to belittle and judge anyone who wouldn’t do exactly what they do. Don’t send your children here don’t fall into the scams and lies. Instead show your children some love talk to them like you would want to be talk to you don’t send them to a troubled youth center and have someone else do your job for you. Especially when they can’t even do it correctly and they will end up doing more harm than good.
I graduated from the joy house almost 10 years ago and I have no idea where I would be without that place!! I was going through a very dark path when I entered the joy house been when I left I was a completely new person. Every person that worked at the Joy house are the reason I am the person I am today. I also became closer to God and that was the most amazing thing about this place.
I am a former Joy House resident.
The Joy House is one of a kind. It’s not a traditional counseling center/residential program. The staff at The Joy House goes out of their way to boldly and fearlessly show Christ’s love to the teen residents...whether it be through the teachers, houseparents, counselors, they all have such a love for God, His word, His church, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
God used the staff at the Joy House to lead me into a relationship with Christ that I would not trade for anything. I am forever grateful to the Joy House and the gracious, Gospel-preaching, loving staff.
I was a previous resident at this establishment. The Joy House claims to help restore lives, teens, and families, but they are most certianly lying. There was so much hate and judgement in this wretched place. I am a pansexual female, and when the house parents found out they went around the house burning sage and praying this "evil" would leave. They isolated me in a room by myself at night, would not allow any way fashion or form of contact with the other residents i lived with, and was constantly being told i needed to change who i was. Also we were locked in our rooms at night, the doors had alarms on them. The girls house, which i was in, did this thing called deep cleaning twice a week. It was awful. Im talking getting on hands and knees scrubbing the floor. They would do this wet paper towel test, where they wet it and wiped the floor. If any residue was on the paper towel, we were forced to redo the entire chore list, plus 3 extra chores. The house mom laughed at me once and told me i looked like cinderella scrubbing the floor. By the end of 5 and a half months staying there, i was so depressed and deteriorated i tried to kill myself. Thats how awful this place is. I spent most of my nights crying. Please, do not send your kids here. It will make them worse than they were before.