At Castle we believe that education involves more than formal school subjects and treatment more than the therapy hour. Instead, our job is to nurture growth and maturity in the total person. This means that we see "education" taking place everywhere, through seemingly ordinary everyday events--household chores, good self-care, relationships with staff and students, recreation, experience in the community, increasing independence and responsibility, and of course, academics. So to us, issues of education and treatment are always closely intertwined, and sometimes inseparable. Castle's program is modeled after the highly successful "psycho-educateur" approach developed in Montreal over 50 years ago. This is a structured approach to child development, based on experiential learning and a carefully designed environment or "treatment milieu." It sees the emotionally troubled young person as having a shaky foundation of coping skills, and our job as helping them rebuild this foundation, step by step. At Castle, the student goes through many of the encounters they will find in real life, but in a protected, simplified way tailored to their individual needs. ...read more