| Schools,
Programs, & Visit Reports - Aug, 1992 Issue
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Circle S Recovery
Ranch
Eileen Kelly, Admissions
Leavenworth, Washington
(800) 544-1668
Lon's Visit - July 15, 1992
Located on 310 acres
six miles outside of town, Circle S is a 60-day, 20-bed Substance
Abuse Treatment Center for boys ages 14-24, with a difference.
Affiliated with Valley General Hospital in Monroe, Washington,
it was founded five years ago by the hospital to move adolescents
out of a hospital setting, and away from the adult program.
The staff feels the move has significantly increased their
effectiveness.
In developing the
new program, they have adopted many elements from the Special
Purpose School and Program concept of healing through character
education. This seems to be a direction many treatment facilities
are moving in. They have an extensive ropes course, which
is an experiential education method of teaching group cooperation,
trust, and building self-esteem. In the 60-day program each
child goes on a 16-day wilderness expedition to learn consequences
and self-reliance, along with other lessons including an appreciation
of nature and its reality. They push long-term follow-up,
pointing out that program success doubles when the child has
an opportunity to continue to work on his issues past the
60-day limits of the program. The children looked good, and
showed strong signs of feeling they were in a safe place and
know their needs were being met.
The program’s tuition
is low, being competitive with short-term special purpose
programs, which is much less than most treatment programs.
On the other hand, the staff and literature use conventional
treatment center terms like “patients”, “illness”, “progressive
disease”, “recovery”, and other terms and concepts which have
been standard for substance abuse treatment facilities for
year. They are Champus approved, and have the advantage of
likely coverage for insurance.
The overriding focus
is coordinating everything through the twelve-step approach.
It seems to me they describe themselves as a treatment center,
while having modified their program cost and actual program
to act much like a Special Purpose Program.
Copyright
© 1992, Woodbury Reports, Inc. (This article may be reproduced
without prior approval if the copyright notice and proper
publication and author attribution accompanies the copy.)
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