Common questions when choosing residential treatment for your daughter

No parent ever dreamed they would be in this position. Few even knew it existed. Now you are faced with considering enrolling your daughter thousands of miles away in a Treatment Center. Overwhelmed with fear and anxiety, you are left wondering “How do I know which one is right for my daughter?”
While there are never any wrong questions, there are things you should know. Below is a great start of things to consider and questions to ask RTCs when looking into them for your daughter.
What is the staff to student ratio? The last thing you want is for your daughter to fall in the cracks and be overseen. Here at Sunrise we have a 1 to 4 staff to student ratio. This helps in developing the relationships needed for change.
What does their transition plan look like? It’s not so much how your daughter does in treatment, it’s how she does when she returns home. At Sunrise we have the end in mind from the beginning. Your therapist will help you design a home transition plan specifically to your family’s individual needs. Part of the transition plan is home visits for your daughter. During home visits, we like to have her Sunrise therapist join for a couple of days to do extensive work in the home to ensure a smooth transition.
How do you handle discipline/ punishment? Because we take a relational approach to treatment, there will never be behavioral punishment such as loss of points, time out, ridicule or belittling. We want a natural consequence to be applied to the action, thus understanding how their actions affect their relationships.
What is the therapists’ caseload? Therapists at Sunrise will not exceed a caseload larger than 8 students.
What is your success? A better question to this is “Do you have outcomes?” Sunrise is fully committed to measuring their success and the success of their students. We do this through a series of normed tests that our students complete monthly, weekly and quarterly. We track their progress from the day they admit to 2 years after graduating Sunrise.
What does school look like? Our approach at Sunrise is to normalize treatment making the transition home as smooth as possible. A large area of this is in school. Our school campus is a drive away from where the girls live. This normalizes the routine of getting up, getting ready, and making it to school on time every morning. Our classes are direct class instruction with licensed teachers. We accommodate different learning styles including IEPs.
How often will my daughter see her therapist? She will have a formal individual session weekly and a family session weekly. However, the therapists at Sunrise are fully integrated into the girls’ everyday schedule. They are at the school when she is at school. They join them on outings, participate in activities at the house, and even eat dinner with them!
Please contact Sunrise Admissions should you like to discuss Sunrise for your daughter, or have any further questions.