Provo Canyon School

Provo Canyon School (PCS) is a residential treatment center for teenagers with two campuses in Utah. The boys' campus is in Provo and the girls' campus is in Orem. The primary focus of the school is residential treatment for emotionally troubled youth. It is owned and operated as a subsidiary of Universal Health Services, Inc..

Placement of students, tuition and funding

As a private educational facility, Provo Canyon charges tuition fees, but also receives state and federal funding. Medical insurance may reimburse some costs.

Many students are placed in the facility by one or both of their parents, typically because mental health professionals and parents feel that residential placement is needed address their children's behavioral health and educational problems. Others are placed there by probation officers or juvenile courts, or local school districts. In the latter case, tuition is covered by state and federal agencies in accordance with state special education laws and the federal Education for All Handicapped Children Act.

Approach

Provo Canyon School combines an academic program with individual, group, family and experiential therapy. Treatment teams for each student include staff therapists, counselors, doctors, and teachers. According to the school's promotional materials, most of the faculty are certified in special education. Treatments may include anger management, sexual issues/trauma resolution, impulse control, stress reduction, assertiveness training, substance abuse groups and additional recreational therapy.

Provo Canyon School's stated philosophy stresses that "youth must take responsibility for their actions or inactions," extending from "cleanliness and order of personal belongings to daily interactions with staff and peers."

The school's methods are considered to be a "tough love" approach: enrollees are challenged to acknowledge self destructive behaviors and grow beyond them, and this process may require constant supervision and intervention. The program used by Provo Canyon School includes teaching students natural consequences and learning to accept responsibility for their choices.

The "behavioral modification program" used by Provo Canyon School in its earliest years included physical restraint, physical punishment, isolation from the outside world, progressive restoration of liberty, lie detectors, monitoring of personal communication, and administration of drugs. However, a 1979 permanent court injunction specifically prohibited the Provo Canyon School and Crist from: "(1) opening, reading, monitoring or censoring the boys' mail; (2) administering polygraph examinations for any purpose whatsoever; (3) placing boys in isolation facilities for any reason other than to contain a boy who is physically violent; and (4) using physical force for any purpose other than to restrain a juvenile who is either physically violent and immediately dangerous to himself or others or physically resisting institutional rules."

The school has specialized programs for substance abuse and addiction problems, an Early Adolescent Program for boys ages ten to fourteen with ADD-ADHD and related behavioral challenges.

Whereas in the past isolation from family was enforced, the facility now explicitly encourages family visits and helps organize family support groups.

Success rates, lawsuits and survivor groups

Provo Canyon claims a high success rate with behavioral problems "where all else failed." A number of graduates and their families report it helped them. However, a number of former Provo Canyon Students feel they have voiced complaints of inhumane treatment, including physical and psychological abuse.

Several individual and class-action lawsuits were filed against the school during the 1980s and 1990s, alleging abuse, violation of students' First Amendment rights, false imprisonment, invasion of privacy, medical negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, civil conspiracy, loss of parental consortium, and battery. All suits were dismissed, in some instances due to the statute of limitation (four years). In at least three cases Provo Canyon School was judged to have fraud, medical negligence, false imprisonment, breach of fiduciary duty, and gross negligence (Taylor v. Provo Canyon School), of cruel and unusual punishment, antitherapeutic and inhumane treatment, and denial of due process of law (Milonas and Rice v. Provo Canyon School). A number of former students who consider themselves psychiatric survivors of abuse have organized online support groups.

Alumni

• Paris Hilton attended Provo Canyon for about one year when she was a teenager.

External links

• Provo Canyon School official home page
• Sommerset Program official website
• The awful truth about Provo Canyon School website

User groups

• Group of former students on Myspace