Lon Woodbury had a vision that he could help parents of at-risk youth and young adults and their families to heal from the dysfunction and traumas that caused kids to act out and misbehave, or otherwise flounder in mainstream society. He had been working as Admissions Director of a school in North Idaho that was enrolling at-risk youth that needed a strong mentor and redirection in their lives but began to see kids with additional issues come across his desk. He kept having to turn those families away or risk enrolling them and creating a program that itself would become dysfunctional. It was at that point that Lon decided he could serve so many more families by leaving the admissions department of the independent school he was employed by and striking out on his own.
In 1989, Lon founded Woodbury Reports, an educational consulting firm in North Idaho, and began gathering information about the private, parent choice schools and programs network around the country. He wanted to offer resources to families so that they could find the program that would best match their family’s needs, while at the same time, helping them avoid some of the downfalls and negative experiences of a bad placement. The placement in the proper place for each individual family was the critical component.
In 1995, Lon decided that while many families were able to reach out to consultants, there were still so many families that would never know that there was even help available, and StrugglingTeens.com was born. We went live in 1995 and have continued to grow since then.
In 1999, Lon’s youngest daughter, Kristie Campbell, returned from her adventuring independent adulthood and settled down to work for the family business. Kristie’s main function at the time was to reach out to each of the schools and programs we knew about and interview them, getting to know the variety of programs out there, and the key people involved. One of her primary roles was to gather and compile the information both for Lon’s consulting practice, but also for the website Strugglingteens.com, to make the information available to parents all over the country.
Being that Kristie had gone through a wilderness program and a therapeutic boarding school, she had many experiences to share with new parents that called. In 2005, Kristie Campbell began working with Lon as an Independent Educational Consultant, helping to not only provide resources and articles for StrugglingTeens, but also make placements for Woodbury Reports. We began to notice that parents were becoming savvier as we tried to empower them with information. We found that they were doing tons of research, but were becoming so overwhelmed with the information they were gathering that they would begin to lose sight of what was important for their family.
In 2017, the second generation took over the StrugglingTeens website as Lon Woodbury decided to step back, and Kristie and her husband Ron have continued to build the website, gathering resources for families and helping professionals as well in both finding information for client placement as well as marketing themselves.
They decided it was time to give the website a facelift and in 2019, StrugglingTeens got a new look that was both refreshing and mobile-friendly. Now the work really began. The site previous to the facelift was well over 700,000 pages of news and information. And although many of the oldest pages still contain relevant information for parents, many contained broken links and outdated information. So now we continuously update pages and work to better the site, while continuing to gather information to cover the various intervention options available.
One change we’ve noticed over the last 25 years is just how far the marketing industry has come into our network. Just like the parents who started to become empowered with information about the schools and programs available and all the diagnoses, therapies, program credentials, and treatment modalities, the schools and programs hired marketing directors to become empowered with tracking site visits, ad clicks, referrers, etc.. Corporations wanted to know ROI. Companies desperate for an explanation of how their funds were working for them began turning to technology for answers. And that technology will give those answers as far as the algorithms can take them. The piece missing from the algorithms was the human factor of advertising.
The big search engines and analytics companies can measure activity performed on a computer. They can track where you go, how long you spend there, how often you go there, etc. What they cannot track however is how long from the time you see a phone number online until you call it from your mother’s house two-weeks later because it is the first time you get to a private phone when your troubled teen is not right there. It can’t track that you read an article on the Internet two days ago, and after talking with your co-worker about it, directly entered the website for the program into your web browser.
The best option for schools, programs, and services in the private, parent choice network is to select those places that have the integrity and experience to persevere. And to remember that having fingers spread all over the Internet simply increase your chances of being found by potential clients.
What do we offer that other sites simply don’t?
StrugglingTeens.com is the #1 Internet referrer to schools and programs around the world since 1995. Our advertisers receive excellent exposure among people who are actually looking for solutions to help their children.
Our traffic ranks highest in the industry among
- Parents
- Referring professionals
- Probation officers
- Therapists and psychologists
- Counselors, etc.
- And other schools and programs
We have hundreds of thousands of pages of information and have grown consistently for over 25 years. Being online since 1995, we have proven to the major search engines that we have longevity and will continue to provide a stable resource of information…A CLAIM NO OTHER MARKETING COMPANY CAN TRUTHFULLY MAKE.
We have a true and accurate historical chronology of the network of special-purpose, private, parent choice schools and programs (including but not specifically limited to therapeutic programs).
Because of all of this, being connected with StrugglingTeens.com just makes sense.
Fear not! StrugglingTeens is still going strong. Despite what you may have heard StrugglingTeens will continue on for decades to come!
For more information about how you can advertise your program or service, contact StrugglingTeens today.
www.strugglingteens.com | 208-267-5550
