A comprehensive investigation has uncovered troubling allegations surrounding a private residential treatment facility in Missouri that serves adopted children and receives significant taxpayer funding while operating with minimal oversight.
The facility, known as Calo Programs or Change Academy at Lake of the Ozarks, charges families up to $20,000 monthly and draws clients from across the nation who send their children across state boundaries for treatment.
While Calo markets itself as a therapeutic lakeside retreat where troubled adopted youth can recover through activities like bonding with therapy dogs, with staff members who “create joy,” the investigation reveals a far more troubling reality.
Local law enforcement frequently responds to the facility for assault investigations and to locate runaway residents. State agencies that fund placements there have raised concerns about the center’s operations, staff training protocols, and lack of transparency. Both parents and former staff members report inadequate treatment services and minimal educational programming, with young, undertrained personnel supervising the children. Two mothers compared the environment to something from “Lord of the Flies.”
In written responses, Calo rejected the allegations and pointed to student success rates as evidence of their effective methods: “For nearly two decades, Calo has provided innovative treatment and critical mental health services for young people who have been failed by the system. Over and over again, parents across the country have come to us in their moment of need, and we are proud of the track record we’ve established helping treat their children and return them to their families with the skills and tools they need to get ahead.”
The investigation utilized extensive state records and documents obtained through public information requests, along with interviews of recent residents, parents, former staff members, and attorneys involved in more than a dozen legal cases against the organization.
Sheriff’s office records from Camden County spanning 2020 to fall 2025 document hundreds of pages of incident reports involving children at the facility as alleged victims, witnesses, and perpetrators of various incidents.
One incident last summer involved multiple girls fleeing toward wooded areas and jumping into the lake to escape, with staff pursuing and returning them, only to witness additional escape attempts. Calo stated no injuries occurred during these incidents.
Prior to that event, sheriff’s deputies documented reports of two children allegedly using methamphetamine that a staff member reportedly brought onto the premises in her personal bag. Calo confirmed the employee’s termination and stated the substance was never verified as methamphetamine.
Another incident involved deputies responding to reports of overwhelmed staff as teenagers “stormed” a room to attack another resident. During this altercation, one boy climbed onto the facility’s roof and jumped, landing on rocks below and requiring helicopter transport to a hospital. Calo acknowledged that conflicts occur among troubled youth, stated staff followed proper protocols in requesting assistance, and claimed the jumping victim sustained only a sprained ankle.
An Illinois mother filed a 2024 report alleging her daughter and another girl were sexually assaulted by another child at the facility. She claimed Calo failed to notify families, state authorities, or law enforcement, and accused the facility of concealing the incident.
Her daughter’s placement was funded by Illinois through the Family Support Program, administered by the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services for behavioral health care funding. This mother and other Illinois parents told investigators they assumed the state had properly vetted the program due to the number of children Illinois sent there.
Both the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services and the Illinois State Board of Education include Calo on their lists of approved residential treatment facilities they fund. Over the past decade, these two Illinois agencies have invested more than $35 million in sending children to Calo, according to obtained data.
In the previous year alone, the Board of Education spent over $1.6 million sending 13 children there for special education services, while Healthcare and Family Services invested $1.2 million for 19 children. Some families utilized funding from both sources.
Bill Hayden reported using Illinois education funding to send his daughter, adopted from Russia, to Calo ten years ago. The retired physician was among families Calo suggested for interviews. Hayden expressed his belief that Calo transformed his daughter’s life.
“I felt that they were dedicated professionals who were trying to do their best with about the toughest group of kids you could probably ever house,” Hayden stated.
Calo operates within what experts call the troubled teen industry, an extensive network of loosely regulated, for-profit residential facilities, boarding schools, and wilderness programs that have been quietly serving adopted children at exceptionally high rates.
The facility opened in 2007 with 40 beds and has undergone significant expansion, reaching a capacity of 144 this year. It focuses on adoption trauma treatment and reports that 90% of its clients are adopted.
Around 2011, a private equity firm led by Stanford graduate Alex Stavros acquired Calo, and over the following 13 years expanded the operation by merging with other treatment centers to create parent company Embark Behavioral Health. Stavros, who stepped down in 2024, did not provide comment for the investigation.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Stavros claims to have grown Embark to 38 programs across 20 states and achieved a 40-fold revenue increase to $180 million. Under his direction, Calo changed its financial model “from entirely private pay to majority third party reimbursed,” including private health insurance, Medicaid, and various government programs.
During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, as residential programs faced enrollment challenges, Embark organized dozens of industry professionals to discuss business strategies. “DOING EPIC SH$T” appeared on the cover of the August 2020 “Embark Academy Sales & Marketing Conference” handbook, which included a session on “overcoming objections” with sales techniques to “build your client base and keep your pipelines full!”
In a session promoting admissions as an essential component of the treatment team, the handbook stated: “The admissions person sells hope when the family is at their lowest and most hopeless, scary, and vulnerable time.”
The company defended its marketing strategies targeting families in crisis.
“It is a common misconception that for-profit entities are more expensive or less ethical than non-profit organizations,” Calo stated. “Reaching them through thoughtful outreach and advertising helps break down the mental health stigma that keeps people from seeking treatment …”
Some local officials have questioned Calo’s business approach.
Stacy Roberts, who operates the local juvenile detention center, said his agency experiences frustration with Calo and handles as many as a dozen cases annually involving out-of-state children from Calo.
Numerous families have criticized conditions at Calo as resembling a jail. Roberts dismissed this comparison, noting that traditional juvenile detention centers like his operate under higher standards. Unlike Calo, Roberts reports to the public, judicial oversight, and the juvenile justice system, which monitors children’s stays within his facility.
“It’s a business,” Roberts stated. “They’re not doing this because they want to help. They’re making money off these kids.”
