Mr. Damien A. Dodd, LCSW

Damien Dodd, LCSW and online counselling sessions were unfortunately, a complete “FAIL” in my opinion.

Background:
My ex and I went to Damien for advice on how to deal with our daughter that had 1) multiple substance abuse history and 2) several in-patient hospitalizations and chronic behavioral issues.  So we had multiple serious reasons for seeking therapy and for seeking his care.

First, his initial visit with us was plagued by connectivity issues (Yet we had been on hundreds of video calls prior to July 2020 and 99% of them were resolved quickly) it was more-so an inability of his to master the TapCloud tool with which he chose to communicate with his patients.

Second, at the end of the first visit we agreed that he would call me for the next, but on the second visit - he ENTIRELY forgot to call me. (I had to text my ex to get him to call me!) 

Supporting session detail:
1. Both visits he struggled with getting us both in the call resulting in 10-15 minutes of missed therapy, his needing to restart the session and re-establish contact with both of us. (As we are co-parenting our child)
2. Both appointments felt rushed after his resolved the multiple-call issues
3. Both sessions had his answers seeming both unprofessional and unapologetic when I raised issues

For example (as a serious concern) I asked a simple question  “Should our child be present in the house when she can over-hear discussions in the session??”.   His reply was “Well, it depends what is being discussed..”  
I replied with “How do we know what we are going to discuss in your sessions?  That seems like a cart leading the horse as we don’t know what will be discussed.”   After which, Damien abruptly ended the second session (coincidentally at the exact top of the hour) stating he had another appointment that he had to start!

In summary:
Damien was un-skilled at being able to facilitate using TapCloud to have two (2) appointments. I feel we received about one actual hour of counselling out of two sessions.  (I’m sure he billed insurance for two full sessions)
Damien seemed very un-experienced of how to handle remote (Tapcloud) therapy sessions
Damien’s answers were unthoughtful when he suggested that we could have the child (minor) addict overhearing the session as he was speaking with us.

Regarding Damien Dodd, LCSW (Hoffman Estates) I would go elsewhere for your therapy needs!