Ten Times More Likely: Why Adopted Kids Fill Missouri's Treatment Centers
Adopted children make up roughly 2 percent of American kids. According to experts cited in a major Associated Press investigation published this spring, they make up somewhere between 25 and 40 percent of the population in residential treatment facilities nationwide, and adoptees are estimated to be as much as ten times more likely to be sent away to one of these programs than the general population. The AP's investigation didn't just document this pattern nationally. It centered its reporting on one facility: Calo Programs, also known as Change Academy at Lake of the Ozarks, sitting in rural Camden County, Missouri.
A Facility Built Around a Single Diagnosis
Calo markets itself directly to adoptive parents, advertising treatment for reactive attachment disorder, often shortened to RAD, a diagnosis originally meant to describe the effects of severe early-childhood neglect in children under five. According to Brian Allen, a psychologist who runs the mental health program at Penn State's Center for the Protection of Children, RAD has been misapplied by some facilities to virtually any adopted child with behavioral challenges, regardless of age or actual clinical presentation. Allen's own clinic studied 100 adopted and foster children referred for treatment. Roughly 40 percent had been diagnosed with RAD. Not one of them met the actual diagnostic criteria.
That mismatch between diagnosis and marketing matters because it's the foundation Calo's business is built on. The facility says roughly 90 percent of its clients are adopted, charges as much as $20,000 a month, and has grown to a capacity of 144 beds since opening in 2007, drawing families from more than 30 states who send their children across state lines.
Who Actually Owns Calo, and Who Pays
Calo was acquired around 2011 by a private equity-backed venture led by Alex Stavros, who spent the next thirteen years merging it with other treatment centers into what became Embark Behavioral Health. Under that ownership, according to AP's reporting, Calo shifted its business model from entirely private-pay to majority third-party reimbursed, meaning private insurance, Medicaid, and a range of state government programs now cover much of its revenue. Illinois alone has sent over $35 million in state funds to Calo over the past decade through its education and healthcare agencies. Stavros has claimed Embark grew to 38 programs across 20 states with a 40-fold increase in revenue during his tenure.
That funding structure is worth sitting with. These are, in large part, taxpayer dollars flowing to a private equity-owned facility with limited outside oversight, a pattern we've written about before in the context of companies like Acadia Healthcare and Universal Health Services.
What the Records Show
AP's investigation drew on hundreds of pages of Camden County Sheriff's Office reports documenting calls to the facility, showing children at Calo repeatedly involved as alleged victims, witnesses, and perpetrators of assaults, along with runaway incidents and at least one instance in which two children reportedly obtained methamphetamine that a Calo employee brought onto the property. In 2022, Missouri's Department of Social Services ordered Calo to turn over five missing incident files after the facility failed to properly report them.
The lawsuits now pending against the company describe a consistent set of allegations: staff throwing youths to the ground, denial of medical treatment, withholding of food, and instances where staff reportedly knew about physical or sexual assaults between residents and failed to act. One mother told AP that her daughter was sexually assaulted by another resident in 2024, and that Calo never notified her, the state, or law enforcement. As of June 2026, at least fifteen former residents have filed lawsuits against the facility alleging abuse dating back to 2014.
Calo has denied wrongdoing and pointed to its own outcomes as evidence of effective treatment. That dispute is exactly what civil litigation exists to resolve, through discovery, sworn testimony, and a full accounting of what the facility knew and when.
Why This Matters Beyond One Facility
Calo is a single, well-documented example of a much broader pattern. Facilities across the country have identified adopted children as a distinct, profitable market, built marketing around a diagnosis many of these kids don't actually have, and relied on public funding streams that face far less scrutiny than the facilities themselves. For adoptive families already carrying the weight of a child's early trauma, that marketing can be genuinely persuasive. It's designed to be.
If your adopted child was placed at Calo, or at any residential treatment facility in Missouri or Kansas, and something happened there that didn't match what you were promised, you deserve real answers about what the facility knew and failed to disclose. McGonagle Johnson works with survivors and families navigating exactly these cases.
McGonagle Johnson offers confidential consultations for families and survivors pursuing institutional abuse claims in Missouri and Kansas.
