Therapeutic Education Schools

8299

INDUSTRY SNAPSHOT

Therapeutic education schools offer rehabilitative programs for troubled youths. Ranging in age from 10 to 18, enrollees typically suffer from behavioral or discipline-related problems, as well as substance abuse. Varying in style and structure, these institutions also are known as therapeutic boarding schools, attitude adjustment schools, behavior modification schools, and in some cases, boot camps or wilderness schools. They can include community-based living programs, emotional growth boarding schools, and residential treatment academies, both in the public and private sector.

Therapeutic education schools differ from traditional reform schools in that a child's parents may be involved as part of the therapeutic process in the form of family counseling. Although children follow different admission pathways, their parents usually place them. In some cases, a judge may order a troubled adolescent to enroll in a therapeutic education school as an alternative to serving time in a correctional facility or psychiatric hospital. However, despite some similarities and overlap, these programs are different from juvenile detention centers, state-run "boot camps," and reform schools restricted to criminal offenders.

Because there are many types of institutions and programs available, the therapeutic industry offers parents who are facing tough choices a tremendous range of solutions to improve a child's future. Families stand a much better chance of turning a troubled child around and helping him or her toward a brighter future by dealing with the problems head on and employing one of the many therapeutic educational choices. However, a study issued in late 2004 by the National Institutes of Health said that some of the tougher programs can be not only possibly ineffective, but also possibly harmful. The report stated, "Programs that seek to prevent violence through fear and tough treatment do not work."

ORGANIZATION AND STRUCTURE

Therapeutic education schools operate in many parts of the United States and the world. Programs targeting U.S. families are common in the western part of the country, especially in states like Idaho, Utah, and Montana, where regulations are either lax or non-existent. However, programs also operate in Canada, Mexico, and more far-away locales including Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, Jamaica, and Western Samoa. In the case of foreign-based schools, government oversight or regulation is limited to the countries in which they operate. Government standards for such schools may not exist, or be very different from those in the United States.

By the early 2000s, therapeutic education schools numbered in the thousands, according to some estimates. While industry programs varied in their approach to rehabilitation, they all served the same target market: troubled children and adolescents. Numbering more than 10,000 per year, these enrollees typically suffer from behavioral and discipline-related problems, and many struggle with a wide range of addictions, including drugs and alcohol.

As David L. Marcus explained in the October 2, 2000 issue of U.S. News & World Report, "By several measures—including a decline in teen pregnancies and drunk-driving incidents—America's teenagers are doing better and better. But there is a subgroup that is in serious trouble, if not yet criminal trouble. These are the kids with discipline problems and Internet addictions, the ones who try everything from the drug ecstasy to sex with strangers, looking for a high, a connection, anything that might make them feel good. Psychologists say these kids share one trait: poor self-esteem. But in other ways they vary greatly. Some have parents too authoritarian and removed, others too lax—to the point of viewing pot-smoking as family recreation." In addition, many of the children who end up in therapeutic education schools come from middle class and upper class families where busy professional parents are often absent from the home.

While some children clearly are admitted to therapeutic education schools for the wrong reasons, such as what many would consider to be typical adolescent behavior, a great many have suffered emotional and psychological problems, including depression and anxiety, from a very young age. In some cases, these problems are very serious and lead to unpredictable and dangerous behavior.

Admission Pathways and Procedures

Children are admitted to therapeutic education schools in a number of different ways. However, parents usually initiate the process—often as a last resort, when other measures fail. In order to reach desperate parents, many schools employ traditional, results-oriented marketing tactics like Web sites, videos, and targeted print advertising. In fact, in the May 9, 2003 New York Times, columnist Robert Weiner revealed that some parents send their children to therapeutic education programs based on little more than a glossy brochure or a Web site. Not taking the time to make actual site visits, these desperate parents sometimes end up placing their children in schools outside of U.S. borders, many of which rely on "minimum wage custodians more than teachers or therapists." In addition to marketing efforts, schools also develop working relationships with front-line referral sources like psychiatrists, counselors, juvenile court judges, and educational consultants.

In their marketing communications, some schools mention the availability of special "escort services" that can be used to extract troubled youth from their homes and transport them to the school. These services are offered because many children would not willingly enter such a program. Extractions usually happen at night when children are asleep, and restraints like handcuffs are sometimes used. The legality of these extractions has been challenged in some state courts. Opponents—including grandparents of extracted adolescents and the adolescents themselves—have charged that they constitute kidnapping and a violation of civil rights, while proponents argue that they fall within the boundaries of parental authority.

In some cases, children are enrolled in therapeutic education schools by judges or state departments of correction. These "adjudicated" enrollees would otherwise be sentenced to psychiatric hospitals or traditional juvenile correctional facilities. One example of this type of enrollment is the RedCliff Ascent Outdoor Therapy Program in Utah, which admits offenders from the Utah Department of Corrections into its wilderness-based rehabilitation program in exchange for an annual fee of approximately $500,000.

School Types

Therapeutic education schools, many of which are privately owned, are organized and structured in different ways. Because of their varying operational styles and treatment approaches, these institutions go by a range of names, including therapeutic boarding schools, specialty boarding schools, attitude adjustment schools, behavior modification schools, as well as boot camps or wilderness schools. As Time Canada explained in its January 26, 1998 issue, these programs "come in many varieties: religious, military style, and some focused on special issues like drug abuse. A few try to 'shock' gay children back to heterosexuality."

Despite these differences, most schools share similar objectives. As Chicago Tribune reporter Bonnie Miller Rubin explained in the paper's January 14, 2004 issue, they "all seem to share the common goal of fostering self-control and self-esteem by removing distractions—peers, TV, computers—and putting youth in environments that promote good choices. Typically, the programs rely on a behavior modification system that rewards compliance and makes the students ultimately responsible for their own conduct. Ideally, as they progress through each level, they will gain new insight into how their actions affect others."

Therapeutic education programs can last two years or more, depending on a child's needs, progress, and his or her family's ability to pay. Program elements, which fit into highly structured schedules, frequently include classroom time, individual and family therapy sessions, physical labor, and, in some cases, wilderness survival exercises. In the case of reputable programs, specially trained and certified instructors, teachers, counselors, and therapists lead these activities. Additionally, a licensed medical doctor (often a psychiatrist) is involved, either as an employee or on a consultative or on-call basis, for the purpose of prescribing medication.

Of the different therapeutic education school varieties, wilderness schools have received significant media attention in recent years. These programs, many of which are based in mountainous or desert locations, use the simplicity and rigors of nature as a means of breaking through to troubled youth. In addition to building self-esteem and confidence, such programs also teach self-reliance and teamwork. As one camp operator explained, while adolescents may have been adept at using manipulative behavior with parents and other authority figures at home, they cannot use the same approach in dealing with the wilderness, where actions take precedence over words. In these camps, students spend as long as three months trekking through difficult terrain. In order to survive, they must master increasingly difficult sets of wilderness survival skills.

Operations

Many therapeutic education schools are tightlipped about the...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT