What's going on with Young Vibes?

I found Young Vibes (https://youngvibes.co.uk/) and thought they might be the answer I was looking for. You probably think the same if you’re reading this.

I took the time to do due diligence checks on them and wanted to help by sharing what I found.

Anyone considering using this company is in a stressful place and desperately looking for a path through what seems an impossible situation.

There’s a yearning for a soothing balm that will give you a break. Let you breath again, and let you go back to how things used to be. You want someone to understand this and make everything better.

This won’t be what you want to hear, but being under this much emotional pressure is exhausting and can put someone in a very vulnerable and susceptible position.

We might want the answer to be something else but that’s just not the reality I’ve found.

“Well, what else am I going to do? We’ve tried everything and they seem to understand this and say they can fix it”

I get it, but to make wise choices we should firm up our emotions with clear, objective, rational thinking.

Let’s apply the same standards of thinking as if we were trying to find a new bank, or a plumber, or anything else. They don’t even have to be the best in the world, just not rip you off.

These are our children, so standards should at the least be the level that you would use for these less important things. Right?

Here are the red flags, along with a simple question for each, to give some contrast. I hope this helps.

“As you read and watch and hear the words that we are speaking, don’t think that this is too good to be true”

In life, things that are too good to be true are... generally not true. The clue is in the words. It is not a convincing argument to simply declare the opposite. This is a bad start.

Compare with: “It might seem too good to be true, but we can help you lose 50lb weight in just 2 days”

Question: Would you sign up for an online bank who says: “we double your money in 10 days. it might seem too good to be true, but just ignore that thought and invest with us.”

Go to any online business and scroll to the bottom of the page. You’ll see clear company registration details. If the company is a brand, you’ll see information about who owns the brand. There’s usually more on the privacy policy page.

Why so vague? There’s also no “About Us” page, and no information on who works there. Why not let us know more about you, and your history?

Question: would you buy from a website that has little information about the company?

Red flag 3: unclear company structure

The privacy policy says:

“This privacy policy applies between you, the User of this Website, and YVL Recovery, the owner and provider of this Website”

Ok, so “YVL Recovery” must be the parent company, although they’re not registered at companies house. But then:

This privacy policy should be read alongside, and in addition to, our Terms and Conditions, which can be found at: www.anxietyrecovery.co.uk”

Huh, “Anxiety Recovery” too, I guess. That link is wired up to point to yet another name, “https://www.themumsnet.com”. These sites all redirect back to Young Vibes.

Young Vibes Ltd is registered at companies house since just 2023. I guess these are all brands, but it’s vague, and why is the copyright from 2019 for a 2023 company?

More on this later.

Question: would you buy from a website with unclear origin and that has ambiguous links to other identities?

Red flag 4: immature qualification approach

There’s no staff information I can find, but on the FAQ page there’s an “What are your qualifications?” question. The answer is:

If you have to ask this question then you are in the wrong place.

What's with this? The implication to me is that no, they don’t have qualifications. And not only that, but they appear to be mocking and deriding those who do, and making this seem a silly question. It's not.

Why not answer plainly? If the answer is no, then say that. Instead, they could describe their history and experiences, and the research they’ve done. But this answer comes across as immature to me, bordering on conspiratorial “don’t trust mainstream” thinking.

I want people who are involved with my children’s mental health to at least reveal some kind of ability to do the job. They themselves should come across as mentally stable, a conclusion that this answer does not support.

Question: if you were interviewing a new member of staff and you asked them “how are you qualified for this job?”, would you hire them if they answered “if you have to ask this question then you’re looking for the wrong people”?

MASSIVE RED FLAG 5: Advertising Standards Agency ruling

Looking up the Young Vibes director names leads to another company that they run, “TOMWILL (HOLDINGS) LIMITED”

Now, the major thing about this company is that they have an Advertising Standards Agency ruling against them: https://www.asa.org.uk/rulings/tomwill--holdings--ltd-g21-1116080-tomwill--holdings--ltd.html

This lists even MORE company brands:

Tomwill (Holdings) Ltd t/a Kids Anxiety Disorders; Teenage Anxiety Freedom; Anxiety Freedom Formulas; Anxiety Disorder Recovery; Your Child Free Formulas

Wow. Those names sound very Miracle Mineral Supplement-level tacky and pseudoscientific.

But anyway, the point is that this Tomwill (Holdings) Ltd company was found to have breached advertising standards for offering the same claims as Young Vibes:

The ASA considered that consumers were likely to understand the claims “Finally there is a way to get … children anxiety free”, “a new strategy for dealing with teenage anxiety that will get your teenage child anxiety free” in ad (a); “A formula … developed to end anxiety disorders” in ad (b); “Anxiety FREE” in ad (c); “FREE CHILD ANXIETY TUTORIAL!!!” in ad (e); and “ANXIETY is so incredibly easy to treat in children”, and “ANXIETY FREE” in ad (f) to mean that Tomwill (Holdings), operating under different business names, were able to treat and cure anxiety in children and teenagers using the service they had developed.

Because neither CAP nor the ASA had previously seen evidence that the approach developed by Tomwill (Holdings) could be effective in treating anxiety, we considered that a high-level body of relevant evidence was needed to prove the claims. However, we noted from their response to the complaints that no clinical trials had been conducted to evidence the efficacy of their offering.

Because Tomwill (Holdings) had not supplied evidence to substantiate the claims made about the efficacy of their service in treating anxiety, we concluded that they were misleading.

On that point, ads (a), (b), (c), (e), and (f) breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation), and 12.1 (Medicines, medical devices, health-related products and beauty products).

Question: Would you hire a plumber who uses multiple identities, and who has been found to formally breach advertising standards?

REALLY MASSIVE RED FLAG 6: BBC report!

One of their brands, “Your Child Freedom Formula”, has an entire BBC “File on 4” investigation podcast covering their awful business practices!

Mental health profiteers: The dark world of online anxiety ‘cures’.

No wonder they’ve changed brands so much.

The investigation reveals dubious techniques from even more morally dubious people. Particularly shocking was asking people to video themselves exposing themselves to fears and filming themselves in distress, to share with others.

At this point I’m personally done, and wouldn’t let my children anywhere near these people.

Question: Would you rent a holiday cottage from a company who were covered by a BBC investigation team?

RED FLAG 7: poor response to BBC report

The Young Vibes FAQ page mentions the BBC report:

In 2019 we limited ourselves to 5 families a month. The cost per client was expensive. Parents not being able to afford the program were furious 😡 one of them contacted the BBC who ran an unsubstantiated ‘profiteering’ podcast on us (at the time we were actually running at a loss 😂)

We are proud to swim against traditional methods and abhor the practices of medicating children (The modern day chemical lobotomy) We despise the labelling of children and forcing young people to dredge over trauma (some are medicated to get them into therapy)

This angers 😡 Mums who have chosen this route and feel we poke at THEIR pains – they take to social media to vent rather than to change.

We excluded 4 families from our program due to safeguarding issues 😡guess where they went ???

This FAQ response comes across as yet again deeply immature and reveals fringe views, such as referring to medication as “modern day chemical lobotomy” and implying that trauma should be ignored. I want stable minded and grounded people looking after my children, not this kind of disjointed ignorant reaction.

Note the lack of acknowledgement and engagement with the issues raised in the BBC investigation, and the deflection of blame onto other people (the parents). I shouldn't find myself thinking "this person needs counselling" in this of all settings!

This makes me seriously worried about their approach to looking after children.

Question: You’re looking for a window cleaner. One company has bad reports, and when you ask them to explain what happened, they deny wrongdoing, talk about the Earth being flat, then go into a rant placing blame on their customers. Do you hire them?

RED FLAG 8: awful online feedback

There are several threads on mumsnet about the company’s bad business practices, including high pressure selling techniques.

Sure, there’s a lot of opinions here, but there are also a lot of cold hard objective facts, and a lot of difficult questions for them to answer.

I wonder if this is why Young Vibes has that other “themumsnet” brand, to somehow mock them.

Question: Would you hire a decorator who has overwhelmingly negative online discussions about them?

RED FLAG 9: high pressure cult-like sales script

This is super disturbing to me. Someone was accidentally emailed the “Peaky Parents” sales script, used during initial calls with parents to get them to sign up. Although they claim it's no longer used, it's very “multi level marketing” style and reveals they know exactly how to manipulate and guilt parents into making bad decisions.

It’s here: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/child_adolescent_mental_health/4352676-Peaky-Parents-Kactus-Kids-formerly-known-as-Your-Child-Freedom-Programme-YCFF-and-other-previous-names-Child-anxiety-programme?reply=111418614

Look at this. This bit is trying to put barriers in place to stop parents thinking too much, and to avoid listening to people who tell them this is a bad move:

Now one final thing….. please remember you have taken the biggest step towards leaving (CN)’s anxiety behind and having your family’s life back. You and I know that because we’ve been talking about it for the last hour or so and we know its the logical choice.

However I can promise you that within the next 72 hours or so you’ll have a wobble of some sort. Either you’ll talk to a friend who (whilst they mean well) doesn’t get it and will try to bring you down. Maybe you’ll even have something happen - like a big bill come through or you’ll feel less confident than you do on the call with me and your reaction will be to call me up and say you want to quit. I’m telling you this now so you know it’s totally normal - it’s your brain going crazy and trying to get you to go back into your comfort zone where you’ve been stuck with (CN)’s condition

So know when that happens, that is NOT a sign to say you’ve done the wrong thing - its simply fear of change because even posi-tive change is scary!

And if it happens just reach out to me and I’ll talk you through it. Make sense?

This here is reality-denying cult-like manipulation. Did Charles Manson write this? Even if they don’t still use this script, the same people are behind Young Vibes. My children WILL NOT go anywhere near minds that think like this.

Question: (I’m too angry to think of a question that would reflect the level of repulsion I feel)

RED FLAG 10: parliamentary question

In April 2024, Young Vibes are mentioned in a parliamentary question as preying on vulnerable families!

Alison Thewliss

(Glasgow Central) (SNP)

T9. I have had concerns raised about a company based in England but operating across the UK online that shape shifts and is known variously as Young Vibes, Peaky Parents, Kactus Kids, “themumsnet” and, currently, Anxiety Recovery. It offers to fix children’s anxiety in mere weeks, but it is preying on vulnerable families, drawing them into expensive treatments, and inciting them to take out loans and get into debt. It is operating outside regulatory frameworks, so may I ask what Ministers can do about such unscrupulous and exploitative companies? (902460)

Victoria Atkins

The hon. Lady raises an important point, and I ask her to write to me, please, so that we can look into it.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2024-04-23/debates/3D89BB24-399A-4FB7-86EA-8479332367B5/TopicalQuestions

Question: Would you hire a babysitter who has been mentioned in parliament as preying on vulnerable familes?

And so many more red flags.

There’s so much more and I’ve not even covered the unproven content that’s offered by Young Vibes. It doesn't deserve further attention with this kind of dodgy foundation.

The company: unqualified and unscrupulous. No sign of ethical oversight. I wouldn't trust them to clean my gutters, let alone hand over my children to them. Don't use them, obviously. If this is not obvious, then detach from the emotions you're feeling and then, clear-eyed and honestly, read all the red flags again.

The technique: if these people really have "fixed" anxiety then it would be massive news. It's not, because they haven't. They would be proudly publishing real scientific studies. They wouldn't be mocking qualifications. They wouldn't obfuscate their brands. Most importantly - the techniques would be widely used as standard. And if that were the case, why not push aside this mess of a company, and instead go for another company offering a similar service, but run by qualified people bound to ethical standards. If that doesn't exist, then why not? Be honest.

All these red flags are enough to tell to my emotional “but what else can we do?” thoughts to back the hell down, and just avoid this company (and I’m sure their next several brands) like the plague.

But what else can we do? There might not be an easy answer to this, but at the very least I promise to keep blatantly predatory businesses, and potentially harmful techniques away from my children.

I'm sorry I didn't get a better outcome from my investigations