But, also, if you look at the Aspen facilities as a group they are doing well. Thousands of at-risk children are getting the help they need and are being turned around. so they need to keep chipping away at the problem areas and reducing the risk to zero.
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I would consider it to be a rather thankful phrase to claim that they are going well.
I can see that they have recognized that they had a problem with running facilities which were "we cure all problems here" facilities.
The boarding school in Texas was hit by a change in local government when the new sheriff not only disallowed years of practice - the scared straight tour in the local jail. He arrested the employee who managed them. Their version of the scared straight method was rather extreme, but it had been going on since year 2000. They were forced to change the program but were then hit with another problem running a substance treatment facility when you are a for-profit program. They didn't make profit, so they closed it down. They have changed the target group for
Sunhawk Academy properly based on what they learned in Texas. I don't know if they are able to make a profit, time will show.
Cedars Academy closed. Aspen did properly discover what they had bought as it had a long history including problems with the license.
Over the years
Academy at Swift River had more managers than most of us have underwear. Somehow the many changes in therapy approach has turned out to be what saved them from closure because they started out as a Mount Bachelor copy, but the downside is that every peer group has been a kind of testing ground.
I guess that it is a question of time before the weight division will be changed from a residential approach to a kind of consultant based activity. Independent research has shown that in order to achieve a lasting weight loss the clients have to make the changes back at home, so the mixed results we see today where the students gain all the weight they have lost once they return home will result in a reduced enrollment over time. Taking a kid away to a residential program in order to achieve weight loss does not work unless the child take over the entire cooking process back home. It can work with adults because adults make their own food. Kids eat what is served by the parents. The school they planned in the New York region has been abandoned and now they plan to open a school in Europe properly having underestimated how far we are in Europe on this area. However I can see a golden egg in their Wellspring Fit Clubs, unless the sport shops in the United States are very behind ours as almost every shop here have a running club where some of the employees run with customers one time per week after business hours.
Finally of course they have the wilderness division. Even without the deaths it should be clear for them that they lack a component. A competitor in Colorado is working with a German television station and they seem to have developed a version of a wilderness program which works way better than more traditionel wilderness program. Basically the kids are in the wilderness for 6 to 7 weeks and the parents entire 4 to 5 weeks where there are therapeutic breaks with shopping etc. The Germans did try Turn-about Ranch, but did choose to customize Monarch with European knowledge instead. If Aspen don't develop their programs they could end up loosing out to more modern programs. Tough love was a 1990's thing. Generally we now know better.