Safe Haven in Lake Bluff was a blessing for my child. He has high functioning autism, depression, anxiety, and executive functioning disorder. He is exceptionally intelligent and kind. The neighborhood school was not working for him. The teachers could not understand that he had difficulty in getting the information out of his brain and onto paper in the time allotted. He would be punished and ridiculed by the teachers! The bullying by his peers was relentless. I pulled him out in fourth grade. The district demanded he return. I said "Absolutely not!" After a lot of back and forth, they agreed to have him enrolled in Safe Haven. It was amazing! The class sizes were small. The teachers were very caring and attentive. His first social worker was so kind. (She eventually moved to a different school.) His second social worker was very nice, too. I watched my son finally get the help he needed to succeed. He attended Safe Haven from fifth grade through high school. He was allowed to take classes at our local high school, too. (Our high school had a very good psych case worker.) He participated on the sports, teams, too. The safety, emotional support, and nurturing helped my son achieve his potential. He graduated high school as an honor student at the local high school (meaning perfect 4.0 GPA), a National Honor Student, and an Illinois State Scholar, which means he was in the top 10% of all graduating high school seniors. He just graduated from a top rated University in May. I cannot thank Safe Haven enough for guiding and helping my son, when the local grade school district didn't care what happened to him. They like round pegs. If your child needs a small school that cares, check out Safe Haven in Lake Bluff. Remember: Illinois has a law that allows you to choose where your child can get the help they need, and your home district must pay for it. read more

I have 2 children going on their second year here. Very accommodating. Very friendly. Very in tune with the kids' individual needs and gives plenty of individual attention in a respectful, comforting manner. Excellent communication! My children are thriving. read more

Horrible, a lot of the teachers are mean and the whole place is just disgusting. Half the time your supposed to have art, they don't come get you and leave your forgotten, all you do in gym is walk in a circle and if you don't bring a lunch, no one cares, supposedly they have crackers and tap water for you but that was never offered when I didn't have a lunch accept for the very first day. You can't leave the room without a teacher coming with you, you can even go to the bathroom without permission from a teacher, and then after a nothing escort teacher is requested, accepts, and then comes to your room to take you. The bathrooms don't lock, and there's so many stupid rules that don't make any sense, you can't bring a phone in without giving it to the principle first, the cars that pick everyone up are always late. And there's so munch hallway propaganda for they "Transgender Club" everywhere, in every single room.and during study hall, you have to do this horrible mindfulness thing that no one likes where they make you put everything away and they do this relax hypnosis trance thing that everyone hates, the worst part is the teacher says you don't have to do it but if you chose not to, you have to sit quietly and not doing anything till it's over which IS DOING THE TRANCE THING!!! You can't not do the trance because, it's loud and you can't ignore it and if you try and put headphones in to block it out, the teacher will take them. They yell at you if your open your chrome book or even have a pencil out during the trance, it acutely gives me a headache and it's fifteen minutes everyday that I'll never get back. Over all I do not like this school one bit and I strongly do not recommend it. read more