Excelsior Youth Center is the leading residential treatment center in the country for girls, ages of 11 to 18, who are emotionally and behaviorally troubled. Excelsior residents are educated on campus in the fully accredited Middle/Senior Excelsior High School.

Facility
At any given time, a total of 180 residents live on Excelsior's 33-acre campus. A total of eleven cottages, including the Treatment and Learning Center (an intensive treatment unit) and the Transitional Living Unit, comprise the residential program. The Day Treatment Program serves up to an additional 20 clients.

HISTORY: In 1894, the Good Shepherd Sisters opened The Home of the Good Shepherd on South Colorado Boulevard for orphaned girls with problems. The Sisters and the girls did the laundry for the railroad and several hotels to support the home. In 1968, the Sisters built a new facility known as the Neuville Center and relocated to Aurora. In 1973 the Good Shepherd Sisters closed their program when the emotional and behavioral needs of the girls became more than the aging nuns could manage. The facility was acquired in 1973 by a passionate group of community and business leaders who organized a non-profit corporation and hired professional staff to continue providing a home and treatment for emotionally and behaviorally disturbed young girls. The center was re-named Excelsior Youth Center.

Treatment
Excelsior's continuum of treatment services is implemented through a comprehensive approach, individualized to meet each resident's unique needs. All therapies are carried out within a framework of Reality Therapy principles that stresses individual responsibility for one's own actions, management of behavior, as well as a concern with psychotherapeutic issues and accelerated rehabilitation.

Staff
Excelsior employs 320 full and part-time staff that includes Licensed Masters and Bachelor degreed therapists and Group Care staff, Social Workers, Recreation Therapists, Psychiatrists, Consulting Psychologists, Principal, Licensed Teachers, Educational Diagnosticians, Registered Nurses, as well as administrative and support staff.

Program
All residents of Excelsior Youth Center participate in a structured, supervised treatment and group living program that is govemed by the concern for the whole child, with an emphasis on presuming normalcy and mental health. The effort is made to rehabilitate the resident in as short a time as possible with consistent and mature adult supervision.

Spiritual & Cultural Development
On a noncompulsory basis, Excelsior offers a variety of religious activities and spiritual counseling. A myriad of outdoor education and cultural activities are provided through the recreational and education program, as well as within the residential setting.

Organization
Excelsior Youth Center is a nonprofit corporation, governed by a Board of Directors. Excelsior expends $15 million annually to operate its facility and its revenue is derived from fees for service reimbursed by departments of probation and social services. Excelsior Youth Center established the Excelsior Youth Foundation to protect and ensure that the long standing quality of care continues for its young residents. As a separate entity, the Excelsior Youth Foundation derives its revenue from investment income on a permanent endowment fund, individual and corporate gifts, foundation grants and special event fundraising.

Council on Accreditation of Service for Families and Children, Inc.

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