The Monarch Center for Family Healing is focused around a wilderness experience and is designed to be intensive and extremely challenging. Our belief is that there are inherent qualities to wilderness settings that ultimately force students and families, as a whole, to examine their behavior.

Four Main Components That Make Up Our Philosophy:

1. The Monarch Center Founders
2. Monarch Metamorphosis
3. The Monarch Mission & Vision
4. Monarch's Five Core Foundations

A Word About the Use of Education Consultants:

For the purpose of the therapeutic program industry, an Educational Consultant (EC) is a person whose job it is to be fully aware of all of the therapeutic programs in the industry. Ideally, when a parent in crisis contacts an EC, that person would be able to match them up with the appropriate program based on a set of criteria (such as geographic location of the program, cost, average length of stay, specializations within the program, etc) partially set forth by the parent. For a cost, this is obviously a valuable service to families in crisis.

Unfortunately, many (though not all) of these Educational Consultants refer parents to a short list of programs with whom they receive referrals back from. We believe that this sets up a conflict of interest and is a dual relationship as referrals are being traded back and forth, thereby compromising the independence and objectivity of the consultant.

In addition to the issue detailed above, it has been our experience that many Educational Consultants often send a youth to a therapeutic boarding school or alternative placement following time spent in a wilderness program regardless of the progress made by the youth and his/her family. For example, many EC's view wilderness therapy as a "wake-up call" and will recommend a wilderness program only as the beginning of a long (and expensive) set of services. Often, these EC's will recommend therapeutic boarding schools before there has been a chance to determine if the wilderness program alone can meet that families needs. We believe children are best raised in their families, and that in the right circumstances enough work can be accomplished in the wilderness program to successfully reunite the youth with his/her family. The EC model quite often brings an abrupt end to family life, with the adolescent graduating from boarding school and moving onto college. At Monarch, the majority of our students and families are able to live under the same roof again and, with minimal and normal disruptions, proceed with the family life they once knew.

Obviously, not all EC's engage in the above practices. Monarch has worked with and will continue to work with those EC's that don't require reciprocal referrals from us as well as those who will participate with the treatment team at Monarch and in conjunction with the family, to decide what is the best course for each family’s unique needs.