Peaky Parents / Kactus Kids - formerly known as Your Child Freedom Programme (YCFF) and other previous names - Child anxiety programme

[Daaxy]

My son was showing signs of anxiety and I was looking for help for him. I came across an ad on Facebook - Kids Anxiety Disorder Solutions. I watched an hour long webinar and then had a lengthy telephone appointment - this was the point that Peaky Parents was introduced.. The programme comes very close to guaranteeing that your child will be cured within around 8 weeks. it costs either £2500 or £5500 depending on the level of support your child needs. Some aspects of the engagement/sales process with Peaky Parents made me feel uncomfortable - I wanted to do some research on the company before signing up. I came across the link referred to at the start of the thread which has lots of views and information about YCFF, now Peaky Parents.

I would not have come across this information if at the time I had just been researching Peaky Parents. I do not know the reason for the name change.

Radio 4, File on 4, is broadcasting a programme on 21/9/21 at 8pm called Mental Health Profiteers - based on this organisation I believe.

If you are thinking of signing up with Peaky Parents I would suggest you look at the YCFF thread before making a decision.

Concerns expressed about Peaky Parents on the YCFF link include:-

high pressure selling to vulnerable people - specific aim to create a 'marketing machine' to sell this online programme

encouraging vulnerable parents to put themselves under financial pressure to raise funds for the programme

bold statements, approaching a guarantee, that the programme will work, with no evidence to back this up

blaming parents for the programme not succeeding for their child
lack of qualifications held within the organisation

young people giving personal video reviews

lack of professionalism - emotive language designed evoke guilt

criticism of other professional services

no regulation

This is hilarious

What’s a ‘suffererer’?!

I wish I would have seen all of these before I signed up because if I had, I wouldn’t have signed up and saved so much time, energy, stress, overwhelm and money. I personally don’t jive with these videos. Had I known this is what the program would be like, watching Sam talk and talk and talk, I never would have signed up. Just FYI parents, it’s about 100 videos for parents to watch in this format. Sam might have good things to say at times but she says them over and over and over and the videos are just her talking. It’s really hard to get through and then you hate yourself for not watching them as often or as quickly as you should.

A typical response from a company after you review them.

These examples of responses are incomparable! The 'normal' response is far, far from how this company (whatever they are called now) respond to anything but praise and gratitude. Hope the negative impact this company had doesn't hang around you too long. I've felt it for 2 years now 😔

Hi, I haven’t posted for a while, here is an update. Sam Robins and whatever unskilled unhelpful company she’s hiding behind did not take me to court in the end… they filed to sue me and didn’t go ahead to court.
I got my money back through my credit card.
Here is the BBC (file on 4) podcast about them, my daughter and I got this reported.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000zt9y
Please don’t be afraid, they are all talk and are bullies.

I wish I knew about mom‘s net. I signed up around this time last year. The only way I found out there was discussion about peaky parents, Young Vibes, cactus kid, Satsie Thomas whatever you wanna call it was from Sam herself!!!! 🤭🤭🤭 I didn’t even know until she mentioned it in an email

Thanks for your update @Twoandtwois6 it's good to hear they didn't take it further. Hope life is better for you now 🙂

HALLELUYAH!!! What a relief for you. This "anxiety healing" program produces so much anxiety for so many of us. HA! Very happy to hear this.

I stepped away from all of this as I had a lot going on personally-sadly I still do but I can’t stand by whole Sam does the same as she did to my friend, so I’m back…

This is a message to Sam as I suspect you’re reading this. I know who reported you to the ASA and they plan to get in touch with them again due to your repeated incorrect and unethical claims. I know that someone is about to report you to HMRC regarding likely VAT fraud and please also know that I will be contacting my friend who is a journalist to see how we can progress a much needed investigation into your organisation.

These are not idle threats - they are facts that you should take note of. My file on your organisation grows by the day. You are damaging people’s mental health with your unscrupulous business practices!

To everyone excluding Sam - apologies that I may be quiet on here for a while but when I am able to I’ll report back.

@NettieRE if you have not already done so it may be helpful for you to request a SAR (subject access request) from Sam’s organisation; I doubt they’re registered with the ICO and even if they are they are unlikely to be able to comply (and if they do it will creat work/admin for them). My intention here is to create business disruption. They must be stopped from their activities. This may provide some useful information to you, and at the very least if they don’t comply they can be reported to the ICO for non compliance as my colleague at work is pretty certain that they need to be registered.

I will report. And if your journalist friend needs families to talk with, we can. Many are afraid to talk to the RIP off Britain show as it then exposes their children to MORE anxiety. And just the mention of this company brings feelings of shame, overwhelm, loss, anger, resentment, confusion and the list goes on.
There are people working behind the scenes to see this company stops messing with people's mental health and wallets. Reach out to me where you need back up. I will file that complaint.

I am sorry to hear you have a lot going on. Thanks for what you are doing and Sam is absolutely reading these. A few days ago when I was posting, I got emails from her very quickly telling me I could not post the things I was posting. This is BEYOND loco. Never seen a "company" behave this way.

Here is the place to make the complaint. https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/

In theory , shouldn't every GP , therapist and school be filing a complaint against them here? https://www.asa.org.uk/make-a-complaint.html

They work to discredit these organizations often in their messaging by saying they cannot solve anxiety.

Has it been shared on here what their "method" actually is?

If it's so wonderful then I can't understand why it's not being sold to the NHS, schools, etc (I am being facetious btw)

Children meet with a mentor every week. (but they do not send out a reminder or a link each week. We asked about this. They do not do it. Not helpful with ADHD).

Kids are also supposed to watch videos. Kactus Kids.

( I had to manage this as the mentor did not. I had to remind my daughter to watch them.)

Parents get links to a website with about 100 videos of Sam talking. Peaky Parents. There are three stages. Caterpillar, Cocoon and Butterfly for parents and kids.

Sam addresses neuroscience and tells you to repeat mantras like "this anxiety will not hurt me." You are supposed to support your children in that.

So it is a combo of mentors and videos of Sam talking neuroscience.

They call it "Physiotherapy" not psychotherapy because they want you to repeat actions over and over.

Then you can attend weekly meetings with other parents with Davina or Sam moderating. You do not know the other parents and people are talking about their children and problems.

I am glad it works for some people. It did not work for us.
I found the neuroscience sound, but the company to be poorly organized, mentors poorly trained, tech clunky, zoom links were not updated for the weekly meetings, I have zero confidence in Sam's judgment or the companies moral compass.
The amount of videos is TOTALLY overwhelming. I had to work with my ADHD coach to get through them. It weighed on me and took a lot of bandwidth. Every time you would get through a section, there were 10 more and then you felt stressed you would not remember everything.

With the large amount of information, I got lost on what I was actually supposed to do. It was like a Dam burst and you are drowning in information. It was not clear to me what I was supposed to be doing to feel better besides repeating a mantra and not talking about things that make me anxious with other people. There were two things.
You could go to the parent classes but I found it did not make me feel better.

The people and company just never jived with me. I never felt comfortable about any part of it or most interactions. I do not doubt they try hard, it is just not a well run, well qualified, well trained company.

Soon into the program, after watching maybe 8-10 videos of Sam (I cannot say for certain what video) Sam has a video that said "Now you should be feeling better." My husband and I were sitting in the living room and looked at each other and said "really?" Again, I cannot say for sure when this video appears but it was in the Caterpillar stage. We did not feel better.

We have never felt better with this company. Hope that helps.

It was a bit different 2 years ago. Daily parent zooms for example. Not so many videos.

There website recently said to watch the videos and decide for yourself if it would work for your autistic child. So they shouldn't be telling you it would work for you really.

They asked us at the first phone call if we really believed our child was autistic. We said our daughter doesn't accept it. They said "good girl!" as a response to this because they did not believe it existed.

As I've said all along beware if you have other diagnosis. They DO exist and this programme more than likely will not work for you and will more than likely make things worse.

As I've also said all along their programme will work for some, as everything does, BUT they believe if it isn't working its you're fault as parents. Blame, blame, blame cos Sam had a crap experience with her own parents (she talked about this a lot)

I was told they had recordings of everything. Now they say they do not have a recording of the time Sam was talking to my daughter. They are threatening legal action against me and threatening to slander me.

All for the price of 5,000 pounds.