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

www.youngvibes.co.uk - is this them too ?

Sadly, this is not them changing their organisation name, they are just setting up lots of FaceBook Pages, which can be named anything. They have a number running now, all with different ads, based on linking to the same webinar.... It seems to me that they are very aggressively pushing that so that they keep the pipe-line churning.

Yes, ann, they are using a few main websites including the one that hosts their webinare.

The one that hosts their main content is the YoungVibes website. They seem to simply shift the content to new website names when they need to re-invent themselves to avoid scrutiny.

Effectively, they are all one and the same but operating under the Limited companyt name of TomWill Holdings Ltd.

I Don't think I understand, it seems hard to believe that they would do this if they are working with children.

Which part don't you understand Ann? If I can help you understand I will do my best to help as I am sure others on this thread will too

Im confused as too why they make so many names, and if they cared about children, then surly not :(

Hi Ann - they change their name so regularly to try to avoid scrutiny, to entice people to use their services and to seperate themselves from their past negative reviews.

It is clear to us (those of us calling this organisation out on this thread) that they are misguided and while they might beleive they are helping young people (and may help some, an individuals belief can be very powerful such that if they beleive it will help them it might) they do not have the right training, processes or ethics to run this organisation as it should be run.

@TeenMinusTests

The Radio 4 Programme File On 4 21/9/21 @ 8pm is well worth a listen. On BBC Sounds, & repeated this Sunday morning too.

Interesting, thanks.

They change their name to try to distance themselves from this and previous threads as well as the ASA ruling and trustpilot closing for new reviews due to them misusing the reviews. On here, many of us have asked legitimate questions about their process and using high pressure sales tactics. There was a while where googling Your Child Freedom Formula brought up mumsnet threads over their own, now deleted, website. So they kept changing names. Sam has only once come on here as herself but her posts got deleted for breaching guidelines.

And it all just started by the OP on the first thread asking if anyone had used them. I had no idea on that first thread that we’d still be here months and months later and that it would have evolved like it did. good had been instrumental in that as was daaxy who posted the sales script on a previous thread.

I have read those threads and ow understand why they are doing it, its morally wrong on so many levels, and whilst they maybe helping some children like you said, if they just answered legitimate questions and actually helped you understand why they do this all the time, people might start to know them. but its impossible. what bout the previous clients ?

I don’t know what’s happening with previous clients. There were some on here who were happy and others who really weren’t. Some of the happy ones turned out to be fake and it was the same poster posing as multiple people. There were a lot of deletion messages on the first thread due to that. I honestly just think now that Sam and Martin just like getting £5k off people and then when it doesn’t work out they blame it on the parents not trying hard enough.

This makes me sad and angry.

File on 4 is confusingly a BBC programme. I had been afraid to admit it’s my story, I found the journalist, I gave them access to as much as I could, they did their own research and had to prove it all before being given the go ahead to produce and air it.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000zt9y

Tomwill holdings is still taking me to court on paper, but I strongly doubt there will be any case. They are doing as much as they can to force me to spend money defending myself, by dragging it out for as long as possible without actually going to court.

My daughter is still very unwell, this awful experience has had its impact. I’m am as a result cautious and have doubted my own judgement as I chose to believe in the Robins’s. We are doing our best every day, this will not beat me, but it’s going to take my daughter a lifetime to manage, their lies will always be in her mix of experiences, she is the one suffering and struggling, she does not need setbacks in her position, and that is on Martin and Sam Robins.

Oh bloody hell, two is the court case still ongoing? It’s so awful that they made your daughter worse, I remember you saying it had had a significant effect on her. They just don’t give a flying xxx about anyone.

Hi everyone, well they seem to have ramped things up with lots of new company names / pages on Facebook+ ads and a YouTube channel. They have used all the feedback they've got on these threads to make themselves appear more professional.

I think these threads need to be kept active, so they keep coming up in searches.

I'm not really on Facebook so I don't see the ads. They can be reported to ASA again though if they are continuing to make false claims.

All very disheartening.

I’m sad reading this thread. I was signposted to it as I’d posted on Facebook after hearing from one of the families I support who was vulnerable and who had been taken in by false promises and the hope that their child could be free of anxiety within weeks (having had no joy with the NHS). There are many free local support groups across the UK which offer support and signposting to decent resources and training by parents with lived experience. Have a look at the Charlie Waller Trust PLACE network to find your local group. I will be sharing the information about Peaky Parents and the other named companies with my peer organisations to warn parents to do their research prior to parting with their money. As a parent with lived experience who is now training in mental health I found it absolutely heartbreaking when I listened to their 1 hour marketing video which did indeed prey on those common vulnerabilities which parents generally have when faced with a child with poor mental health.

@Riley1972 thank you so much from me (and I’m sure others!) for this post and your stated actions. This is exactly how awareness of this unscrupulous organisation can be well spread.

By way of update from my end and my contacts, an updated report has been lodged with the ASA. I’ll advise here if I learn of any update.

Oh for goodness sake - another new website has been created (along with associated Facebook pages!):

www.our-formula.com/?fbclid=IwAR2wwd5v6MltyYAma-S9xOEo6SNj3IL1cY3SikPu5eVNQbnBP_lhK8bM0nE

Like a terrible virus we can’t get rid of!

Thanks for the heads up. Will keep sharing awareness as much as possible 🙏🏼

There’s one that I saw on Facebook today called Our Formula www.our-formula.com/testimonials they can’t provide any information about the medical staff and their registrations and I can’t find them on companies house. They’re really convincing on the webinar that they can resolve childhood / teen anxiety in 16 weeks and most of the webinar was reinforcing how terribly hopeless you feel as a mum - and very much targeted at mums. I’m wondering whether this is another example of exploiting peoples vulnerable states in the post pandemic mental health crisis we’re experiencing now.