Weighed down by the past

I have waited a while to post this review. Our daughter went to TAR in July and was there for a little over 100 days. We ended up here because we were in crisis mode with her and had to make a quick decision. We were not sure what we were getting our selves into. This place requires careful consideration. The 100-day program (all-in) was about $60k. About what it would have cost us for a year at a therapeutic boarding school. Its a huge investment for 100 days. We live on the East Coast so travel there was incredibly hard - its a 5 hour drive traveling south of Salt Lake City or 5 hours north from Las Vegas. The reason for this poor rating was two-fold:

• The program was absolutely no help to our daughter - she coasted through and sort of played the game so she could get out by the end of the 100 days. Somehow she kept a calendar under her bed to count the days. Her therapist never picked up on this behavior even though we warned her.
  
  
• Communication is poor. I called 2 times and send one email during the 100 days and never received a reply from our therapist. You get 1 call per week from a therapist. Ours was 8pm on Friday night which was a tough time but we made it work. However, the therapist would call anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half late. That was hard given that there was no respect for our time and if that was the only conversation that we could have about our daughter - some common courtesy should have been shown. We also communicated some pretty big concerns to the therapist but a lot of them were not addressed. We finally got a hold of the director at the end of the program but that was a little too late in the game. Really the only solid communications or reply's we got was from Shane (the admissions person).
  
  

The reason I gave this at least one star is that there were people at the ranch that genuinely cared for our daughter and made some positive impact on her. You don't get to speak to them but you meet them when you go out to the ranch during mid-term and graduation.

Turn-About Ranch offers a 30-day return to the program if your child regresses. But I'm not sure I would go down that road if the 100+ days made no positive change.

Update on our situation 2/19/2020

As I sit behind my daughter in juvenile court - I’m reminded how much time and money was lost and how poor the care at the ranch was. My daughter reinforced how she coasted through the program. The letters she was forced/required to send home were all lies. I guess you rate a program like this based on its effectiveness and what your child takes away from the experience - our experience and her experience was obvious poor at best. We will most likely have to have her stay in a foster home for a period or move on to a therapeutic boarding school. I hindsight, that probably would have been the best bet. If you arrive in a situation that we have with our daughter it’s so important to slow down and evaluate options that will best benefit your child. The cost of this program in the end has limited out ability to finance the next steps to a boarding school. I will officially pay off the balance of the loan I took out to pay for the ranch on 12/1/2020. However we will do whatever is necessary to get our daughter back on track and hopefully set her up for future success.

More information

• Due to the facility taking everyone in regardless of issue an employee was murdered (source)
• It was used in the English reality show Brat Camp and the German reality show "Teenager ausser kontrolle" (Source)
• Two of their former detainees became famous. English Jemma Lucy and the American singer Bhad Barbie (source)