Second Chance in Rice, VA

Pros

• Second Chances is a great place to receive mental help for adults and children.
• The agency and the wonderful staff provided psychiatric and outpatient services and helped families become independent.
• Because of Second Chances, clients learned to care for their children and saw improvements in home behaviors.
• One happy client thanks Second Chances for the changes in their lives and household.
• The reviewer recommends trying Second Chances and promises you will not be disappointed.

Cons

• The place is horrible and absolutely disgusting; they allegedly treated the reviewer’s son and the reviewer horribly and only cared about money.
• They are described as a cash cow rather than providing care for crisis programs, and the reviewer claims to have recordings of all calls.
• The place should be shut down; the counselors are horrible and never answer the phone; they bill insurance for services not completed; months are wasted and families have to start over.
• The organization is a mess inside and out; they only care about money; the only good reviews are allegedly from their own employees.
• The company is accused of lying; they only care about insurance payments; the owner allegedly lies to clients, never returns calls, and does not schedule therapy appointments; people have to chase them down.
• They are said to cause hopelessness and perhaps contribute to suicide rates.
• BBB should check this place out ASAP.
• The worst experience described includes staff missing appointments, double-booking, and losing the child’s contact information including the social security number; the business is labeled unprofessional.

Review

Second Chance in Rice, VA is best suited for families seeking affordable outpatient mental health support where cost and access trump flawless coordination. The program can still deliver on basic psychiatric services and independent-skills guidance for adults and children, but only for those who are willing to actively oversee care, press for timely communication, and validate every billing item. In practice, that means a family ready to act as a constant advocate, tracking appointments, and demanding accountability more than trusting a smooth, turnkey experience.

Those who require consistently reliable scheduling, transparent billing, and staff who reliably listen and follow through should consider alternatives. The strongest warning signs show up when expectations hinge on steady counselor availability and proactive case management; in several accounts, clients faced long gaps between visits, missed appointments, or unreturned calls. For families with urgent or ongoing mental health needs, the absence of predictable responsiveness can undermine progress and erode trust in the provider’s ability to support a sustained plan of care.

On the upside, a minority of reviewers credit Second Chance with genuine warmth and the capacity to help families gain footing, cases where psychiatric services and outpatient supports were navigated with care and the home environment improved as a result. Those positive experiences illustrate that the organization can mobilize helpful professionals and deliver meaningful gains for some families. Yet these successes feel episodic rather than systemic, and they are consistently outweighed by the louder, longer-standing complaints about how care is managed and billed.

The most consequential drawbacks cluster around organizational chaos and service gaps. Accounts frequently describe counselors who do not answer phones, miss appointments, or cancel without timely notice. Billing concerns recur, including claims for services not completed and questions about whether the insurance payments being sought are appropriate. Several reviews point to leadership around billing and scheduling as unresponsive or opaque, with threats of misrepresentation or miscommunication about what services were actually provided. The pattern of unreliable administration magnifies every clinical shortcoming, making it hard to trust that a plan will be implemented as intended.

Families weighing this option should demand concrete, enforceable guarantees before enrollment. Seek a single point of contact for coordination, a written care plan with explicit milestones, and a clear billing agreement that itemizes what is billed and when. Request licensure verification, inquire about staff turnover and ongoing training, and ask for recent references from families with similar needs. It’s prudent to compare this provider against other local options in terms of appointment availability, continuity of care, and demonstrated outcomes, especially for pediatric or adolescent service lines where consistency is critical.

Bottom line: the published experiences show meaningful concerns about reliability, communication, and billing that are too persistent to overlook. While Second Chance can deliver helpful, compassionate care in specific cases, the risk that routine scheduling failures and opaque billing will undermine progress is high enough to counsel caution. For families with tighter thresholds for reliability and accountability, exploring alternatives with stronger operational track records is strongly advised, and using this provider as a last-resort option only after careful, capped trial terms and explicit guarantees are secured.