Head Inside Mental Health
Todd Weatherly, Therapeutic Consultant and behavioral health expert hosts #Head-Inside Mental Health featuring conversations about mental health and substance use treatment with experts from across the country sharing their thoughts and insights on the world of behavioral health care.
Head Inside Mental Health
Finding the right help changes everything with Attorney Laura Sundberg
Every parent knows the heart-wrenching reality: you're only as happy as your least happy child. Attorney Laura Sundberg knows this terrain intimately. With over three decades of legal expertise in trusts and estates, she found herself navigating unfamiliar territory when her son developed severe clinical depression and anxiety. What began as mysterious medical symptoms evolved into a complex mental health journey requiring specialized care. Through this experience, Laura discovered a game-changing resource many families don't know exists; a therapeutic consultant.
In this deeply personal conversation, Laura reveals how professional guidance transformed her family's approach to treatment selection and recovery support. Laura reveals how therapeutic consultants provide crucial navigating for those seeking appropriate treatment. Unlike general referrals or internet searches that might lead to inappropriate placements, consultants who regularly visit and evaluate programs nationwide can identify the right fit for specific needs.
The discussion bridges personal experience with professional insights, exploring how these challenges intersect with estate planning. Traditional special needs trusts often fail to address the unique complexities of mental health conditions. Laura shares essential considerations for creating effective trusts for beneficiaries with mental health challenges, including authorizing trustees to work with therapeutic consultants, providing liability protection, and ensuring appropriate discretion for difficult decisions.
Whether you're a parent navigating a child's mental health journey, a professional working with families in crisis, or someone planning for a loved one's long-term care needs, this conversation offers invaluable guidance from those who've walked the path. The message is clear: you don't have to navigate these challenges alone, and finding the right professional support can make all the difference.
Well folks. Thanks for joining us on Head Inside Mental Health, featuring conversations about mental health and substance use treatment, with experts from across the country sharing their thoughts and insights on the world of behavioral health care, broadcasting on WPBM 1037, the voice of Asheville Independent commercial free radio. I'm Todd Weatherly, your host, therapeutic consultant and behavioral health expert, and today joining me. I'm excited to have a trusted legal colleague and, I would say, a personal friend of mine these days mom with her own family story about recovery Laura Kristen Sundberg.
Speaker 1:Laura is an attorney down there in Florida with a robust legal career spanning over three decades. She's established herself as a prominent figure in the trust and estates field, which is a place that we do a lot of interface With a JD from Vanderbilt University. Her decades of experience is especially beneficial to trust and estate beneficiaries and fiduciaries, covering areas such as estate and trust administration, capacity issues, dispute resolution, advanced tax and estate planning and navigating stuff with clients when things get hairy. Her professional achievements have been acknowledged by her peers in the legal community. She is a board certified by the Florida Bar and Wills Trace Trust and Estates. Her expertise has been recognized consistently by groups such as Best Lawyers of America, florida's Legal Elite and Florida's Super Lawyers.
Speaker 1:Beyond her practice, laura has dedicated legal education and mentorship. She has frequently lectured at the Florida Bar Seminar she even invited me to do the same thing at one point the Florida Trust School and the Florida Judicial College, and has authored numerous publications, including chapters administering trust in Florida published by the Florida Bar. She also serves as a mediator and been hired as an expert witness on cases involving complex trust estate tax issues, contributing her expertise to conflict resolution in her field. She has led education in the practice of law in Florida as a past chair of the Florida Bar CLE Committee and currently is the vice chair of both the Communications Committee and the Professionalism and Ethics Committee of Real Property Probate Trust Law Section of the Florida Bar, where she remains an influential longtime member of the section's executive council. Laura, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:In other words, I'm old.
Speaker 1:No, well, you know, we work with a lot of folks that are, as you already know, that are dealing with a beneficiary and that beneficiary suffers from mental health challenges or substance use challenges or a combination of the two, and the trust doesn't know what to do with them and the family doesn't know what to do with them. They come to us and we help get them on a track. That is not how we met. Um, we we actually met because you are a mom with a with a story about recovery and, um, we've gotten to work together, uh, with you and your family and navigating some difficult stuff, and I think that that's probably the story that you want to talk about. Uh, I wanted to know, you know a lot of people.
Speaker 1:When they come to us, they don't know what a therapeutic consultant is. They're like what is that? I'm like? Well, I'll try to explain it to you. It's a bit of a niche thing. Most people don't know what they are until they need one, and then you know, at least we believe that it becomes a pretty invaluable resource to have navigating what is ultimately a complex journey. What was your experience? You know, having this issue and being introduced to a therapeutic consultant and having to navigate, you know, a family issue that was near and dear to your heart, and how, like, how was that for you, like where did as a parent, like sometimes they come from all kinds of places First of all, how did you even learn about what a therapeutic consultant was? And then how was it kind of walking into that world? I'm curious to know, because I don't get to ask this question a lot.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I'll tell you that really the interesting thing is, when you have a family member, particularly a child with a, with a critical mental health issue, it's terrifying. I mean, you know the old saying you're only as happy as your least happy child. And you know when, when they're really suffering, there's there's nothing you wouldn't do for them. There's nothing you wouldn't do for them. And you're you know. So you start with sending emails out to all your friends and you say you know, do you know a psychologist? Do you know a psychiatrist? You know, and then you try to find the best person you can find, not knowing whether that's the right person for your child or not. You, you know, you flail around, you spend a lot of money, you wait. Oftentimes you have to wait months to get your first appointment and your person is in critical shape and you're trying to emotionally manage that.
Speaker 2:Actually, one of the treatment places that my son went to, when I was interviewing, or maybe being interviewed by the director, he said to me you know, are you a helicopter parent or a lawnmower parent? And I was like, well, I know what a helicopter parent is and I don't float around him. And I was like, what is a lawnmower parent. He said it's somebody who mows down all the problems for him ahead of time. And I was like, yeah, that's exactly what I've been doing.
Speaker 2:But you know when they're, when they're struggling, like that it's, you'll do anything and and you know so for example, if your child has a substance abuse problem and you don't know any differently, you like, what's the closest place in town that handles substance abuse, what's the most expensive place for substance abuse?
Speaker 1:Because you assume, like that must be the best place that's going to place that's going to give me the best care, right.
Speaker 2:Right and. And so you know, unfortunately, like, I know I'm on your podcast but like the best thing that ever happened to our family was being introduced to you and it, it was such a game changer. And when you say, like, what does a therapeutic consultant do? I can, I can answer that question, because it's the difference between it's kind of like you know, like you have a heart problem and you say, oh well, I'll go to a heart doctor. Well, like. And so you ask your friends, what heart doctor should I go to? Like, you know, none of us really know who's good and who's not good at what they do. I mean, so what a therapeutic consultant does is not only do they know who's really good at what they do, but they also know they they match you and match your child with just the right program. So there's, how many substance abuse programs are there in Florida alone? What hundreds of them.
Speaker 1:There's hundreds. Yeah, I mean we might pop over a thousand, honestly.
Speaker 2:So, you know, figuring out, like, what's the right one for for my person and, um, you know, when we first met, it was. You know that we were talking about this off camera a little while ago. It's a chemistry thing, you know, like it's. This is the off camera a little while ago. It's a chemistry thing, you know, like it's. This is the. This is like your. I'll use my Star Wars Yoda, you know, like you know, this is the person who's going to guide you in your spiritual journey to manage everything that you've got to manage and it's going to, you know, help navigate what is just very complex and very distressing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I. You know, mental health is such a I'd like to say it's not an exact science, and that's largely true. That doesn't mean it can't be done. Well, yeah, it's really tricky though.
Speaker 2:I mean and that's the thing, is that. So the first program that you recommended for our son, the one that he went to, was, you know, our son had severe clinical depression and anxiety, had clinical, severe clinical depression and anxiety, and there was some medical stuff, so you guys were chasing the medical dragon for the longest time. Yeah, so, which which turned out to be psychosomatic. So he was having somatic symptoms, terrible stomach problems and in fact we actually went to.
Speaker 2:Connecticut during COVID and he had surgery for this GI stuff right, did not do anything.
Speaker 1:So that was that, which is what happens if you start turning down wrong roads, like you start turning down treatment roads that are ineffective and cost a lot of money and take time, et cetera.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. You know, it was kind of years in the making once we realized it really was predominantly mental health, and that's the other thing is like, you know, the other part that's interesting is how often substance abuse pairs with mental health issues. But you know, if you, if you lead with the wrong thing, I don't think you fix the problem. And so, you know, our son had some substance abuse issues as well, but it took resolving the mental health issues and and it completely cleared up the substance abuse issues for us and I, which I, I, I guess is kind of remarkable. But you know, you did a lot of coaching along the way and one of the things we talked about just a few minutes ago that, you know, is kind of a surprise side effect.
Speaker 2:I mean, I thought I was hiring you to. You know, because you travel all over the country, you look at all different kinds of programs and you know kind of what's exactly like. Then you analyze the person and you say of what's exactly like. Then you analyze the person and you say what's exactly right for this person and um, and that gave me just a ton of comfort to to know that, um, but you know what I didn't know I was going to need and and relied on, maybe even more heavily than the coaching you were doing for our son was coaching me through the process and helping you know, help, help, helping me manage.
Speaker 2:You know, is this the right thing? What should I be doing now? Like know when to hold them, know when to fold them of as a segue, because of that it made me realize how important that kind of coaching is for anybody who has the purse strings and in my world, in the trust world, how important bringing in a therapeutic consultant is when there's any beneficiary who has mental health issues, because sometimes you were telling me, I want you to do nothing, don't give him any money, don't do anything, Just let him work it out. And a trustee unless they are kind of absolved from that responsibility in the trust document, you know that's that might be liability for them.
Speaker 1:Right. And so it's part of why if they're being responsible, you know their fiduciary responsibilities are to give this person the money when they ask for it. Except what they're doing is, you know, tearing their life apart with the money that they're receiving.
Speaker 2:Right, right. So you know it's, it's, it's not. Not only did you, you know, help our family, but you know it. It opened my eyes to you know things that I could integrate into my practice and and how important that was and how you know we have a very pretty robust system for people who have medical issues like special needs, trust, you know right, Somebody who has MS or Parkinson's or you know whatever.
Speaker 1:And they're aging and you know they've had plenty of time to kind of mull over what they feel the needs are going to be right.
Speaker 2:Well, but there is also, you know, special needs. Trusts are predominantly used to make sure that you don't spend money on things, that there's a government program that would pay for things, and that's mostly how they're designed. And you know, designing a trust for someone who has a mental health issue, it's just completely different. And I think if you, you know you've got to be careful you don't go to somebody who's just going to pull something off the shelf and say, oh, your child has a problem, here's a special needs trust and that's just not going to take you where you need to go, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, do you? I mean, I'm curious. You know we've we've talked about the personal experience that you've had navigating this stuff and having somebody can be like, look, you know, I want you to, I want you to. Here's where I want you to stand still, here's where I want you to pick it up. Here's, you know, the, the, the phases of care look different In the beginning. They look this way. As the person moves in transition, they may move this way.
Speaker 1:So it's not just a one equation kind of thing, and I wouldn't walk into a court or I wouldn't walk into the need for a special needs trust and not seek you out and be like, hey, how do you? You know, what does this document need to look like? Look at, and I've seen and had clients, certainly before, that they'll try to Google consult their way through therapeutic consulting or they'll try to Google consultant their way through legal processes and I'm like get an attorney, here's one, please call them. And you know not being able to know what the answer is, because there's a script right makes writing it down in a document challenging.
Speaker 1:You know, um, and I would say that when you work with the clients that you're working with, have you had the opportunity to work with individuals who are in a similar situation to the one you had, or have a loved one that's suffering from mental illness? What's the language that you're like? How is this working in the language world that you live in?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean the other part is. So the thing I had not mentioned is I have a nephew who developed schizophrenia in his early 20s, developed schizophrenia in his early 20s and you know that's, that's how I got introduced into the therapeutic consultant world. But you know, that's a that's a whole different animal. But I worked with with my sister's family on, probably over a period of six months or so, on designing the right trust for for their family. I, you know it's funny cause we've we've got, we've got AI and it's, it's, it's here and it's coming in and and everybody says, oh my gosh, it's, it's going to take over my job. I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't worry.
Speaker 2:I don't worry about that because I think that really, you know, it's not even so much the words on the page. Really, the most important thing is the individual design of the right estate plan for the family, because it's not just, you know, you're not just setting up a trust, for usually not just setting up a trust for your child who has mental health issues, just setting up a trust for usually not just setting up a trust for your child who has mental health issues, you also have other children and they have felt neglected and ignored and they felt like all the resources have gone to the one who's struggling. And so, you know, trying to navigate how to make sure that there is some family that stays intact when the parents are gone and you meet the needs of the person who has the mental health issues and they're not dumped on the other children. There's an art to all of that and it's not a one size fits all. There's an art to all of that and it's not. It's not a one size fits all. You can't, I can't, you know.
Speaker 2:If you just said, generically, what kind of trust should I do if I have a child who has a mental health issue, I can tell you some things I think you should definitely have included, but really the most important thing is getting to know the family, getting to know who the, what the family's resources look like. Are there enough funds so that everybody can be treated equally? Or, you know, are you going to have to tell somebody some bad news, that you know that they're going to get something less of a share, and do you tell them that? You know? I'm an advocate for telling them that ahead of time and not letting them get the big surprise when mom and dad both die.
Speaker 2:And then, oh, you know, three quarters of the money is going into a trust for Bobby and the three of you are going to share the other quarter and, you know, maybe have enough to go on a vacation, and that's, I mean, that's just a tough pill to swallow. So so there's, you know there's that as well. But you know, regarding the sorry, regarding the you know the provisions. I think, like I I draft into every trust that the trustee is specifically authorized to use trust funds to hire a therapeutic consultant and specifically authorized to follow the direction of the therapeutic consultant when making distribution decisions, and so that takes them off the hook for somebody saying you know, I want to go to the Betty Ford Clinic when they're just not doing what they need to be doing Right and the.
Speaker 1:Betty Ford clinic is probably not the right treatment.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:You know, if they suffer from schizophrenia, right, you know right Exactly, and so you know I also.
Speaker 2:I also think that you should. You know, picking the right trustee is really tricky, particularly if somebody you know schizophrenia is one of the hardest ones, because they go off their meds and then you know off to the races.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know the barrage of things you know you have to be careful about. Like, ideally, you want to have an individual serve as a trustee, like somebody that they can have a relationship with. But if you pick an individual, you better protect them in the trust document, because they're going to have to set boundaries in order to manage that beneficiary over a period of time. They've got to layer some mental health professionals into the mix and you have to give some buffer.
Speaker 1:Well, we were down in Florida together presenting the ATO conference, the Florida Bar is Attorney Trust Officer Conference, and part of what I was doing there was like okay, first of all, we got to match the diagnosis to the treatment you know which so many people don't know how to do and unless you're a therapeutic professional and, frankly, unless you do what we do, which is travel and see things, it can be very challenging.
Speaker 1:I mean, even psychiatrists don't know where to turn. You know what's close to me, you know and what's the most expensive, you know.
Speaker 1:They ask the same questions and they're technically professionals, but, more importantly, the when we work with trusts um, cause I had a I had a um an executive director of a of a pool trust that was there with me presenting director of a of a pool trust that was there with me presenting one of the things that we do is look at the trust but also look at the. You know how much is in this trust, you know this person and we, you know we talked about this this particular case where it's like this individual really liked treatment you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like they would spend every dollar they had on treatment, if you let them, and would often just kind of come out and be like, oh, I need this very expensive this or this very I want to go here and so on and so forth. It's like, look, if you do and I had to be the bearer of bad tidings, you know it's like, look, if you do all this, this is the amount of money you have and that's going to use a third of it amount of money you have and that's going to use a third of it and you want to be able to use this money for the rest of your life. I don't think that you want to spend that this way. I think there are other ways to do it. So we, we take on the whole being being responsible to the fiduciary um of the trust as seriously as the attorneys that wrote the agreement, as seriously as the trustee, the trust manager, if they're involved.
Speaker 1:And you know, as a result, we've got a lot of attorneys and trust entities that have found us and been like we, like these guys, they've got it, they're watching the dollar, you know honestly, that's really a big deal and you want this to last the rest of their lives and then, like you say, you don't want it to dump on the other siblings and the other family members that may be involved, and I think there's a lot of consultants out there.
Speaker 1:But back to this part where it's a personality match, but it's also a competency match, like if you were to, if you as a parent and knowing now what you know, both from a lot of different sides, as a person with personal experience, not only your direct family, but you know other family members and your sister, being a person who's an attorney and helping families with complex matters such as this, a speaker who's going to go, you know, go down to Charleston soon and go speak for the Silver Hill Conference, silver Hill Hospital Association Conference, and you are an honored and distinguished speaker for them, which I'm excited to go see myself. But what would you say that a person should look for in this equation? Like, what makes a good in your eyes? I think I know, but what in your eyes? What makes a good therapeutic consultant? What are the things that come to you when you're? If you're going to say, hey, if you're going to find a therapeutic consultant. Make sure that they know these things. What would you say?
Speaker 2:It's tough because it's that whole you don't know what you don't know, I mean.
Speaker 2:I would say you call Todd, just call Todd. But you know, some of it is like there's so much art to it. I don't know how you evaluate a therapeutic consultant consultant, because I mean, I was like you said, I was impressed by the fact that you spend what probably a third of your time just traveling to different programs all around the country. Like, you don't get paid for that, you get. I mean, that's the research that you're continually doing and you're using that as the basis. You and your team are looking at programs and going and seeing them and again and again and making sure they're still working, um and and understanding kind of the the differences between them.
Speaker 2:So, for example, one of the things I was going to say is you know, you, you recommended a wilderness program for for our son. But there's, yeah, how many dozens of wilderness programs are there. It's not enough to just go do a wilderness program. You, you found one that was the right match for our son, who was not violent. He was not he, he didn't act up, he didn't have those kind of loud, large kinds of problems.
Speaker 1:He isolated and imploded on himself a lot. You know that was the struggle that he had.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so you know, like the, the program you sent, you sent him to, was, you know, I always refer to it as the place for lost boys because you know, like they were all kind of quiet and and if you and if you put a lost boy in a program where there's people who are acting up all the time, there's the loud boys, you know they're going to get no treatment, and so he.
Speaker 2:So you found just the right place for him and and you know, a place where he was not going to get. He wasn't going to be able to get ignored or let himself be ignored and not do the work that he needed to do. And if he had been at another place he probably would not have made the progress that he did. So you know, going back to how do you pick a therapeutic consultant, I think I'd want to know that they travel like you do and that they're that either you or your team are evaluating programs over and over again. Like you didn't just see it, and you know the last time you saw it was in the 80s, you know.
Speaker 2:So that that was kind of a big deal. The personality match, I think, is really important. I never felt like you didn't take the time that I needed to help me work things through, and I know that everybody works a little bit different. I'm sure I took more of your time than a lot of other people do because you know you were my lifeline and you know, um, I, I needed to make sure that that I had you know that that I was looking at everything that I needed to look at and you were patient with that, and so that was really important. But, um, I mean I think it also you want to make sure that you know they have a good reputation in the community. I think you can. The hard part is, if you ask facilities, are you going to get a good referral or not? I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So you tell me, how do you find? If you don't have a Virgil or a Todd already, how do you find?
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I've talked about this a little bit and I'm getting ready to speak on it again for an organization of which I'm a member, and so one of the things I think that you look for in a consultant is that they've got some professional memberships under their belt, like they belong to an organization like the TCA or the IACA.
Speaker 1:They're organizations for consultants and if you belong to them you have some assurance that they've got training, they've got some level of either mentoring or colleagues, they've got a network of colleagues that where you, you know, there is some bear of accountability that happens there. But, more importantly, they'll also have, you know, pcs standards. One of the standards is that we have to travel and we visit programs and there's a certain number that we see. And then, you know, there's ethical guidelines which include not, you know, you know taking kickbacks from programs for referrals you know, there's not.
Speaker 1:There's not these sticky and messy kinds of arrangements they've got with different, different programs in different areas or they're funneling everything to one place. There's also there's a fair. There's a number of consultants out there and the the world is changing so you're seeing a different kind of consultant arise. But you've got moms that have turned into consultants because they went through an experience of having their child go to wilderness or whatever. Their repertoire tends to be fairly narrow, right. So you know they're not clinicians and they haven't done some kind of professional training.
Speaker 1:You know, if you were a person who turned into it let's say you turned into a consultant you're an attorney, you've had a lot of experience with programs. If you wanted to pick up doing what I was doing, I would say that you would add some clinical training to it. You would add travel to it, seeing programs and forging a network out of those things, and you might make a very good consultant because you've also got a level of professional training on a foundation that it can stand on that would allow you to be able to make that move or jump. There are a lot of moms out there that just went and did it.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, yeah, yeah that's.
Speaker 1:that was an early consultant thing because there weren't consultants and then you got organizations and so on. So we've got these standards. Now the other thing that you that you look for, that I've had to provide plenty of and I'm grateful that you've even provided for me is that you've got that consultant has people who are willing to speak to their experience. You know, if you got anybody that you've worked with before that would be willing to speak with me, so just checking off some of those boxes can get you, get you fairly far down the road. One of the particular components of my team that I've built specifically that way is that everybody in my team has experience running programs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's invaluable.
Speaker 1:They've been on the functional operational end.
Speaker 1:So they can walk into a program and know what it looks like. It's like, oh, staff ratios and this, and kitchen was dirty, and you know we can look at a program quickly and know whether or not it's it's running right, honestly, and then how much? And the one question I get? There's two questions that I get from families. One of them is you know, do you get any kickbacks? Great question to ask. The other one is do you do this for a living? Is this all you do? Is this what you do? And it's like yep, this is all we do. You know, this is, this is our job. It's not something we're doing on the side of something else that we do, and I think that's a that's. That's a pretty good question. Actually, cause this, you need to be all in on this thing. You can't. This is not a side project. It's too complicated.
Speaker 2:You don't have a dry cleaners on the network Right right right. Well, you know.
Speaker 1:I've got a daycare in the basement. Would you add anything to that list Like would you add anything in your mind?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I think you know, like I said, the thing that's a little bit of a double-edged sword is do you go to a program to find a therapeutic consultant or do you find one independently? You know, one of one of the things that you recommended very strongly was, you know, when they've gone through a program like that, they can't come back home because they're just going to slip back into where they are and so they need to go into some sort of transitional program, and so the facility was, you know, was advocating that, but they, they were also, you know, kind, I think they were kind of providing names of therapeutic consultants and I, I wasn't, I was glad, I was glad I already had somebody that was, you know, kind of guiding us by the time we were there. But I don't know, I mean, what's your opinion about that? I'm not. I mean, are they the best people to do that?
Speaker 1:Are they not the best people to do that? Um, it's, you know. We certainly have programs where our name is on the list, you know, and they'll mention us along with three others.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And they want to try not to be overly exclusive with a consultant that sort of thing if they're practicing the way that they're practicing. But you know as much as you want to avoid these ethical entanglements. There is a bit of a reciprocal nature you know Sure, not a referral consultant that they haven't worked with right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and same with me, with financial advisors. There are people that they you know, they know what I do, they get what I do.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They, you know, they know what I do.
Speaker 1:They get what I do yeah. They, you know, they know what to expect and they know I'll do the handholding.
Speaker 1:I need to do and they can, but it can overcycle, you know, as in you know Maybe, if they're using a specific consultant who refers to them, is that consultant? Is that consultant channeled for individuals that tend to go to that kind of program, which means, is their experience broad enough to handle a wide range of issues? So you will get consultants that you know. Kind of all they do is refer to, say, wilderness, for example.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And as much background as I have in wilderness and everything else like. My master's degree is in outdoor education, for heaven's sake, but I don't send people to wilderness that much. So for me to make a decision to pick a wilderness program like the one that your son went to was not a lightly considered deal.
Speaker 1:You know, like this has got to fit, this has got to be something that works for this family and works for you know, um, him and his journey and everything else. And then, on the other side of that, like we also you, along with many others okay, we're going to step down from this residential environment, which was expensive and insurance didn't cover much of it, right? What happens after? Well, we're talking about six to nine months worth of doing some other kind of transitional programming, and you could pay. You could pay three grand, you could pay six grand a month, you could pay 15.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Which one of these you know, like what fits the budget, you know what still maintains a level of quality that we think is going to get there. Budget, you know what still maintains a level of quality that we think is going to get there. And and then finally I think this is probably speaks to some of the stuff that we're talking about is your consultant sticking around and walking with you through the process, because it didn't come without trips, it didn't come without little stumbles.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. I mean I, I you know, maybe you need to raise your rates, but but I will tell you that, that you know, with all it I mean it was. It was a ridiculous amount of money that we spent on this whole process. The best bang for our buck was paying for you. The absolute best bang for our buck was, you know, was the guidance we got from you. If you'll recall you, even because of your relationships, you even negotiated a little discount on one of the programs.
Speaker 1:Which I do regularly. It's like hey these guys are going to be here for a little while. Why don't we knock off the dollar a little bit and yeah, you got to ask um so, yeah, that was that.
Speaker 2:That was great too. But, um, but by by far, and, if you'll recall, I, I, I think maybe we hung on a little bit longer and you're like no, no, I don't think you need us anymore. And I was like no, no, we're going to do another six months and we're going to do this because I need to make sure that if we have got a problem, you know.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, we were I mean just like I would say that nothing that happened for you is unusual in all honesty, like there are so many parents out there who are you know they're going to take a step, but it's. Hey, I'm not getting the right amount of communication. Hey, I don't think this clinician is the right one for my kid. Maybe we need to do a switch up or maybe he's looking at making this move. What do you think about this? And are there resources in the area where he wants to go, like all that stuff? It's not just oh, it's got a program, see, I mean there used to be, there's, a consultant world that used to just do placement, um, and there are still a few out there, but like to be able to continue with that person while this process goes on is it's critical Um?
Speaker 2:yeah, it, it, it is, and. And the other thing that you impressed upon us was how important it was to to hit it hard and resolve it. You know, to get him treatment as early as possible, because the amount of time that someone struggles with mental health issues, the longer it goes, the less likely you're really going to resolve them.
Speaker 2:And so I mean that was that was really important and you know it. It for I'll tell you the other thing, and maybe some of your families will relate to this you know when you're, when, when it's your child and they start having mental health issues, it you know, you, you kind of have a plan. Like you're, you you've got a high school plan and a elective plan and an extracurricular activities plan and they're building a resume for college.
Speaker 1:College plan right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like this stuff is. You know you really don't want to disrupt their progress. You know in the regular world their progress you know in in the regular world but ultimately, when, when it's critical like this, you have to just put on the brakes. And that was really hard for me to say like, oh, we're just going to take you out of school and you won't be going to school and you won't be graduating. And you know and it maybe sounds shallow, but you know hearing from all these parents that were, you know that your child was going to school with and you know what superstars their kids were and you know like kind of feeling like you know like feeling like there's kind of a death in the family to a certain extent when you're managing this and it's just so critical and so emotional. Um, and again, you coached us through a lot of that stuff too. On that, you know, like I said, maybe, maybe I'm shallow, but that was hard.
Speaker 1:You're not alone. Um and I think it's a hard message to hear Um, I I take a lot of care in giving that message to family Like, hey, you know I, and the truth is, is that as a, as an adult, you'd say this to any? You'd say this to any like late teen, 20 year old, right, it's like, look, you got so much of your life ahead of you. It's time to do this.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Just because you're not on the same timeline as everybody else that you grew up with doesn't mean really anything. You can say that if you're the person who's standing out and you're not the mom or the dad, right, right, but when? It's your child you're like what, what?
Speaker 1:do you mean yeah, just wait, it's just three more months until they graduate, like could we just get there and then he can kind of take a gap year and deal with his mental health issues, like no, well, it's like I've seen families try to do that but it didn't work, they failed, and it was another year. And then if the condition got worse and you know and I try to acknowledge my own bias Like I see the, I see the cases when they get serious, so we have a bias towards seeing those things and I try to acknowledge it. If there's a less interventive way, great. And to circle it back to some of the trust stuff, this is why trying to put all this stuff down in language, put all the language of that into a trust, to have it follow something, would be very, very, I mean, it's impossible really, which is why you're like be willing to get another professional involved when these things happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, well, and you want to have a trust protector. You want to have, like you know, maybe you do have a child or another family member that can monitor the trustee. But you've got to give the trustee just tons of discretion. You, frankly, have to probably indemnify them because, more than likely, they're going to have a beneficiary who you know is because of their mental health issues, they're going to, you know, they're going to go after them, and so you have to. You know, you have to kind of give them, you've got to give them a lot of power and a lot of control.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because they're not going to be reasonable about it.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And so you need an outside person who can say, yeah, trustee's doing what they need to do, be quiet, I'm not doing anything. But you also need them to be able to say they've gotten a little confused about whose money this is. You know, they're jetting off to San Tropez to have a conference on mental health issues, and that's not really what this money is for.
Speaker 1:They've hired a curandero down in Costa Rica and they're going to do ayahuasca for several weeks and that's going to resolve their issues. Yeah.
Speaker 2:They're going to come with you to the yoga retreat in Thailand. Um, yeah, so, uh, you know, like that's, that's, that's an important part. Um, I, I, I do think that you have to, you know, once again, the most important thing is is give them authority to say no when, when they're they're being directed by a mental health professional or a therapeutic consultant about. You know when to do things. And then you know, once again, I think that you, I don't know a ton of professional, I mean of of corporate trustees that are equipped, you know, equipped for this day-to-day stuff. I know that the people with the pool trust in North Carolina, you know they seemed really terrific.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do that, but a lot of them will turn down stuff when they see mental illness. You know you've got banks with these kinds of you know services and they see mental illness, so they see something complicated and they turn it down. Yeah, we're not doing that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you know that's the big challenge is, you know, working with the family and helping them figure out who you know who really makes the most sense. On, you know, from our ethical perspective. On, you know, from our ethical perspective, like some, on some rare occasions I will serve as trustee, but I spend a lot of time with families that ask me to like, come on, there's somebody else, who else can we pick? Because I don't ever want, I don't ever want a client to feel like I'm trying to feather my nest, like I'm, you know, trying to use my position to have you know to, to take advantage of somebody else. And so you know, kind of back to when you're, when you're talking to a trust lawyer, I, you know, how do you pick a good trust lawyer, kind of is the other side of things, and I think the big part of that is like Go, laura is the other side of things, and I think the big part of that is like Go.
Speaker 2:Laura. Well, just make sure they're listening to you. Like, when they should be asking you a lot of questions they should be educating you about, like, okay, if you do this, this is how this will work. I'll walk you down the street with this and if you put this provision in, this is how it's going to work. Or if you have this kind of person, these are the problems that you're going to have, because you know you're going to need to really make. You want to make the decisions yourself, you want to understand how they work and when you need to make changes. And if your lawyer doesn't take the time with you to really educate you and listen to you and they say you know, here's my cookie cutter thing, here's a special needs trust, there you go, ten thousand dollars, you know, like that, you can, once again, you can spend a lot of money with a lawyer and you won't necessarily get very much of a result.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the thing that's right, that's right for your family particularly. You know it's a lot harder when, when somebody has a family member with a mental health issue, it's not, it's not cookie cutter and you can't you really can't Google your way through it. I mean, you might be able to Google your way through drawing up the document If, once you figure it out, you've really done the hard work and figured out what's going to make sense.
Speaker 1:But I'd still get a lawyer to look at it.
Speaker 2:I still wouldn't do it on my own.
Speaker 1:I mean no, honestly, so I get.
Speaker 2:I get a lot of those after somebody dies and I'm like, well, you know it really didn't work the way you thought it did, but you know this is what you got now.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, penny, wise pound, foolish you know what I mean, like that's what?
Speaker 2:that's the thing that Todd and his team will act as a consultant to the trustee and that you know I've recommended that to all of my corporate trustee friends down here in Florida. You know, like Todd said, he spoke at the ATO conference and I think you're still getting calls from professional trustees about just kind of being either being on retainer with them or working specifically with a specific trust and specific beneficiary. But you know, if you don't have somebody on staff, I think you need to have that resource.
Speaker 1:And one call. We did get had a case with the mom and, you know, with a child who needed care and was in a kind of a bad situation, but the child was. You know we cover a lot of territory in terms of people that we work with, but this individual was just, you know, they were on the end of the care spectrum that we don't spend a lot of time on and is a world unto itself. It was a individual with DD challenges, you know, an IQ below 70. That's our limit, so we refer it out. It's like, hey, here's a consultant who does this. This is not us. And if you're working with an attorney, if you're working with a consultant of any kind, the ability to refer out to other professionals is also a marker of a good company, in my opinion.
Speaker 2:So anyway, so like, if somebody comes and wants to do Medicaid planning, that's you know, out to other professionals is also a marker of a good company, in my opinion.
Speaker 2:so yeah, anyway, but so like, if somebody comes and wants to do medicaid planning, that's you know, that's not what I don't do that sorry, yeah, yeah so I make sure that they you know, they know a couple of people that that I've learned and trusted over time and you know that, yeah, you, you want to make sure that, whatever professional you go to, like they're, they're willing to get you to the right place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Well, I'm excited's, as usual, great to see you and it's been lovely to have you on your show. Thank you for being willing to talk about you, know your experiences and everything else and be vulnerable as a mom. I really appreciate you and appreciate the work that you're doing. I know that we're in the the mutual appreciation club, so I'm I'm I'm always glad about that and that we continue to share with each other personally and professionally. But this has been Head Inside Mental Health with Todd Weatherly. This has been Laura Sundberg on the show. We look forward to seeing you all next time. Take care, thanks, laura.
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Speaker 1:Find my way home.