Last summer and again more recently, Glade Run Lutheran Services, a faith-based, nonprofit organization devoted to the well-being of distressed children for more than 160 years, has been subjected to an unfair portrayal in the media and disingenuous attack by a few parties disinterested in the truth or simply seeking financial windfall.

Keeping the best interests and privacy of the high-risk children and families we serve as a priority, we have been unable to directly respond in the media to these highly sensationalized allegations.

Instead, Glade Run and its employees have focused on increasing safety to levels unmatched in our field and becoming even more trauma-informed as we work with children who are among the most fragile in our communities — often including the suicidal and/or physically aggressive.

With this new onslaught of negative, incomplete and flawed media attention, it has become imperative to respond.

Glade Run was founded in 1854 as the Orphan’s Home and Farm School in Zelienople by the Rev. Dr. William Passavant, who also founded Passavant Hospital and a number of other social service agencies and hospitals throughout the nation. Today, it is one of our nation’s oldest continually operational children’s agencies, providing services to thousands each year at facilities located in Zelienople, Pittsburgh, Butler, Beaver Falls, Sharon, and Cranberry Township.

As recognized experts in the fields of mental health and autism, Glade Run provides school, community, and residential campus based programs that are both effective and impactful.

Children and adolescents make up over 75 percent of those served. The children that are referred to Glade Run have significant mental health issues that place themselves or others at risk of physical harm, and have either been unsuccessful in community-based programs or are stepping down from an emergency stay in a psychiatric hospital.

Common diagnoses can include bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, psychotic disorders, mood and personality disorders, severe depression, disruptive behavioral disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorders. Often youth come to us with behaviors that we’d prefer no child ever exhibit.

Glade Run is not a locked facility, and our treatment plans are highly individualized and family-inclusive. They are designed to allow increasing independence so that the transition to home after services can be a permanent one.

Private, nonprofit organizations such as Glade Run are often the last best chance to meaningfully and positively improve these challenged youth. Glade Run and its brethren battle a stagnate bureaucracy and widespread underfunding, struggling to stave off financial life support to provide services and programs the least protected of our society need to survive.

There is an inherent challenge and risk in providing this type of mental health services — including the risk of incident. When incidents happen, no one is more heartsick and disappointed than our own staff. We use these incidents to improve our care, amplifying our mission to lead extremely traumatized youth into wellness.

After a widely reported incident last summer, thorough internal and external investigations that included forensic interviews of youth and staff occurred. Unfortunately, those findings were not deemed as newsworthy as the grossly sensationalized initial media accounts.

Residential treatment has long been a last-resort for youth in crisis. At Glade Run, we value working with individuals in the most appropriate setting available — and know that at times residential treatment is necessary to stabilize traumatized youth. We remain committed to being a safe and effective option for residential placement despite the risks and challenges.

Glade Run has been at the forefront in its implementation of the Sanctuary Model, a theory-based, trauma-informed, evidence-supported, whole culture approach that is tailored to counteract the wounds suffered by victims of traumatic experience and extended exposure to adversity. Through Sanctuary, we have been able to safely, effectively and successfully impact even the most hard-to-reach child.

Glade Run is blessed with a dedicated staff of employees and partners who place the well-being of traumatized children at the forefront of their daily experience. Underappreciated by those who lack direct contact with the agency, our employees consistently place the care and well-being of children above their own.

We are not infallible. We are transparent and have always strived to comply with the voluminous regulatory requirements that govern our services, including prompt notification of any reportable incident of any nature to the appropriate entity.

We can assure you those obligations were met here. Recent accusations that Glade Run is a large, profit-making entity are patently and willfully false. While little investigation is necessary to confirm this fact, accurate reporting on this issue is nowhere to be found.

Glade Run is grateful that during this time so many of our families elected to keep their children in care at Glade Run, and that we have the opportunity to continue providing quality care to those who would otherwise not receive it.

After a thorough review and investigation, the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services agreed that Glade Run should be allowed to implement a plan for improvement while acknowledging that the services it provides are meaningful and necessary.

Given its long-standing track record of more than 160 years of successful care and treatment of the most harmed of our youth, Glade Run has earned that benefit of the doubt. I encourage the public (and media) to reject the easy, sensationalized view offered by just a few and carefully consider the motive of those so quick to denigrate Glade Run.

Brian S. Kane is the chairman of Glade Run Lutheran Services’ Parent Board.