Group Homes for Troubled Teens
WinGate Wilderness Therapy is a top Therapeutic Program helping struggling teens to learn the skills required for a life of sobriety, independence, and success. Group homes for troubled teens are designed to provide both individual and group therapy and therapeutic supervision, 24 hours a day, to a small group of struggling teens, all from a comfortable home-like setting. Although WinGate may be located outside your area, We accept teens from all over the country.
Group Home Programs for troubled teens provide a therapeutic environment with life coaching; teaching and training of simple like skills combined with therapy. Although WinGate is a "Wilderness Program" for teens, one can alternatively learn the skills required for making permanent emotional and behavioral improvements.
The term "group home" is often used today more "loosely," as a general term for "treatment centers" or "therapeutic programs," and the best group homes offer recreational and real-life activities that integrate into the treatment plan of the student. Moreover, group homes for struggling teens establish rules that are regularly enforced to produce a prosocial positive culture.
Independent Group Home Living
WinGate Wilderness Therapy is the perfect adjunct to the group home concept. Meaning, students who complete WinGate Wilderness prior to enrolling in a group home program, tend to experience quicker and more profound 
recovery than the other students. Because WinGate is an affiliated member of the National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs, parents feel comfortable and confident knowing that we are an innovative program dedicated to providing the highest quality services to the people and families we serve.
Here at WinGate, our staff is composed of professionally trained therapists, who are responsible for creating a safe, therapeutic environment for the best interest of the client. The objective is to teach that living and learning to work together, as a group, provides our students with the opportunity to learn essential life skills that can be incorporated throughout their lives.
If you are a parent looking for a healing, therapeutic environment for your troubled child, please call the Admissions Counselor at WinGate Wilderness Therapy program. We can help you find solutions for your struggling child. Call (800) 560-1599 today!
Best Wilderness Therapy Programs Alternative
At WinGate Wilderness Therapy, troubled teens undergo the therapy and treatment they need for recovery from substance abuse, anxiety, depression, aggression, or poor academic performance. All this from an outdoor environment that is favorable to restoring a teen's mental health. Given the chance to reconnect with their true self in an atmosphere that is free of disturbances and negative influences, teenagers often change more rapidly versus in a traditional residential treatment program.
At WinGate, our troubled teen students profit from a combination of experiential, individual, and group therapy, that teaches the life skills they need to develop and mature into a self-sufficient adult. The WinGate philosophy is based on the Arbinger “Choice” Program. This teaches teenagers to view others, such as their parents or siblings, as people instead of as objects that can be used to get what they want. Our teen students who struggle with addiction are also introduced to the 12 steps philosophy, and the effects are nothing short of exceptional.
“ A half-century of psychotherapy research has shown that the quality of the therapeutic alliance is the most robust predictor of treatment success. ”
As one of the top wilderness programs in the United States, WinGate was established by a group of seasoned wilderness therapists, and leaders in the industry, who believe that in order for at-risk teens to make lasting changes, they need to feel appreciated, respected, safe.
The professional consultants at WinGate Wilderness Therapy are available to privately coach and guide parents of struggling adolescents. Call (800) 560-1599 today for assistance!
What Makes WinGate Wilderness Different from Other Programs?
Unlike most wilderness-based treatment programs, WinGate does not use level systems, group consequences, or any other behavior-modification techniques. That’s because these techniques do not create lasting change.
Instead, WinGate seeks the kind of internally motivated change that relies upon a profound therapeutic alliance between the client and the therapeutic team. This kind of alliance requires a staff that is creative, caring, authentically engaged, and exhaustively trained. Most importantly, though, it requires a deep and genuine respect for our clients.
How Do We Know Our Approach Works?
Not only is alliance-based therapy validated by extensive clinical research, but it’s also validated by our own experience with hundreds of clients. We watch young people make profound life changes on a daily basis.
If WinGate's Approach to Treatment is so Effective, Why Doesn't Everyone Just do It our Way?
As to why most treatment programs, including that of other wilderness therapy programs, operate and function much differently than our 30-year old and scientifically proven treatment model is simple: It's hard work!
You see, WinGate implements a style of care that experts refer to as Alliance-based Therapy, and quite frankly, providing and sustaining this type of treatment is difficult, and therefore, avoided by most traditional - including the majority of even the most reputable of programs.
Whereas most facilities rely on a level system, alliance-based therapy requires of its entire staff, medical or otherwise, to give over complete control to our teenage campers - a concept most programs for troubled teens are simply unwilling to even contemplate, let alone integrate into their curriculum.
Furthermore, when other types of treatment are faced with highly resistant clients, it is much easier for even the most experienced clinicians to instinctively or reactively forcibly regain their control, as they simultaneously demand compliance and behavioral change from their teenage residents.
Unfortunately, their unwillingness to relinquish said power is why so many programs—whether they are outpatient, wilderness-based or residential—rely on level systems and other behavioral approaches that are designed to compel, rather than inspire, change. And, frankly using the latter types of 'stick and carrot' philosophy is just plain easier and more convenient than supporting teens while they lead each other to recovery.
Truthfully, with 30 years in the field on our side, we know from personal experience that level systems or behavioral treatments that implement complete control over their teens simply do not work. What's more, we typically receive children who have already been to one or more programs where level systems were in effect, but ineffective in creating long term change regarding the teenager's underlying behavioral or emotional issues - change from most of these types of programs does not last because their treatment philosophies greatly rely upon environmental factors that disappear once treatment is over.
Luckily for these parents, WinGate only seeks internally motivated change—the kind that lasts a lifetime.
The Keys to WinGate Wilderness Therapy's Success:
The following provides WinGate's Keys to Successfully Treating Troubled Teens. If you are looking for a cutting edge program as an alternative to a group home for your troubled teen, please refer to the links below:
Additional Mental Health Information Regarding Group Homes and Troubled Teens
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