All CERTS programs incorporate the highest, research-supported standards of care available anywhere today. At the center of the results of the research and of all CERTS standards is a not-so-surprising principle of success: individual attention. Frequent individual therapy sessions, provided in the loving and nurturing atmosphere of all CERTS programs, provided by outstanding therapists using the most effective therapeutic techniques today to produce predictable, lasting change in young women.

As a CERTS facility, parents with daughters at La Europa Academy can expect the following clinical services:
 

Licensed clinicians with at least a Master’s degree perform all clinical services. As a CERTS facility, therapists never have a caseload of more than five girls. This helps ensure that unstructured time—as well as the regularly scheduled time—can be spent meeting your daughter’s individual needs.


The process of expressing oneself creatively is inherently healing and life-enhancing. Art therapists have long recognized the value of the arts in working through emotional pain, increasing self-awareness, coping with symptoms, handling stress, and releasing trauma. If channeled properly, creative expression through the arts—whether through visual arts, drama, or music—can play a significant role in assisting troubled young people on the path to healing and happiness.

The typical profile of the La Europa candidate for admission is naturally creative and artistic. She frequently uses language and art as means of releasing. To parents at home, this might be evidenced through journaling her inner pain, drawing dark pictures, or through writing poetry about subjects like pain or death. Through the arts and all of the elements of successful residential treatment, La Europa Academy specializes in helping this type of girl rediscover her inner greatness and the joy of living a full and productive life.


Most of our parents are unwittingly locked into an unhealthy dance step of control battles and manipulation with their daughters prior to admission at La Europa Academy. Proper training and education to help parents break out of this pattern is a key factor for long-term success. Therefore, parents of girls at La Europa Academy are heavily involved in their daughter’s progression in three different ways: first, they have weekly parent reading assignments and homework as part of the Personal Greatness Program; second, they participate in weekly family therapy sessions (via the telephone); and third, they travel to and participate in Parent Weekends that are held on campus every eight weeks. Parent Weekends include family therapy and group therapy sessions, recreational therapy activities done with parents and daughters, Parent Support Group meetings, and specific activities that target improved parent/child conflict resolution and communication.

Parents have frequently expressed to us their surprise (and delight) at the personal growth and change that they have experienced in themselves as well as in their daughter. Significantly, these new parenting skills play a major role in allowing a girl to sustain her change when she returns home in the future.