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Brat Camp Reality TV Series Features Turn-About Ranch - Produced by Twenty Twenty Productions UK

Twenty Twenty Productions in the UK has produced an episode of their reality series, affectionately dubbed "brat camp," that follows the experiences of seven students at Turn-About Ranch. Also called "The Wild Bunch," the Brat Camp series accepted applications from parents who were struggling with their teens and then chose seven teens to attend Turn-About Ranch in Escalante, Utah.

To contact Turn-About Ranch, please call (435) 826-4240

Brat Camp Review from The Guardian, UK Newspaper

Teens who are struggling with behavior, emotional issues, or school work were typical students selected for the transformative experience at Turn-About Ranch. The staff follows the students at this working cow and horse ranch as they learn how to care for farm animals such as horses, cows, and sheep. Students also learn how to grow food and participate in all aspects of daily life, such as chopping wood and cooking. Teens also learn how to ride horses. Viewers see how the working-ranch atmosphere helps teens "get back to basics" and understand the relationship between their actions and consequences.

The program also follows the experiences of the teens' parents at home, who participate in family therapy to prepare for when their teens return home from Brat Camp. The program also covers "parent weekend," the emotional and powerful reunion weekend when parents and their teens work together to improve family relationships. The Brat Camp series, which aired on Channel 4 in the UK, was one of the highest rated shows in Great Britain and received numerous accolades for its portrayal of the struggles today's teens are facing.

Read the full review of the "Brat Camp" series from The Guardian >>

To contact Turn-About Ranch, please call (435) 826-4240

REVIEW OF BRAT CAMP FROM THE GUARDIAN

Joe Sheldrick, a gangly 16-year-old from Surrey, sat his GCSE exams last summer - in theory, at least. What actually happened was that Joe scrawled his name at the top of each paper and left the rest blank. Joe didn't see the point in education, hated just about everything and, in his own words, "needed a kick up the arse".

In autumn 2004, he got it, and a lot more besides. Last night, viewers of the first of Channel 4's new series of Brat Camp saw Joe and six other troubled British teenagers packed off to the harsh regime of Turn-About Ranch in the wilds of the Utah desert, where they faced three months of hard work, healthy living and discipline.

This is the second series of Brat Camp; the first, last year, won a bagful of awards and provided a new term for the great British cure-all of fresh air and exercise: wilderness therapy. Wilderness therapy comes in many forms, it transpires. While series one revolved largely around fire-lighting and long hikes in the middle of nowhere, and had a vaguely New Age air to it, Turn-About Ranch is based on a working farm and borrows heavily from the macho traditions of the Wild West. The kids are taught outdoor skills and horsemanship by an irony-free staff of all-American cowboys. Or, as Joe put it in his first few days, "a load of pricks".

Signed up by their parents, the children are stuck at the ranch until they complete the course or their parents relent and pull them out. Few parents do, however much the kids shout, cry, threaten and feign injuries - all strategies that were tried by the British children almost as soon as they arrived. The seven children featured in the current series of Brat Camp are not your average delinquents: they are obviously middle-class. That was deliberate, says Jamie Isaacs, the programme's executive producer.

"There's been a lot of stuff on television that examines the issues around what you'd call less privileged kids. We wanted to throw the net to get middle-class and upper-middle-class kids." Each has loving parents, a stable home, access to a good education, and, as Isaacs sees it, no excuse.

The 12,000 American children who are packed off to Turn-About or one of the other 100 or so US brat camps every year tend to be from similar backgrounds, largely because wilderness therapy does not come cheap; a place at Turn-About costs $329 (£175) per day. Typical courses last three months, landing parents with a bill for about $30,000. Children who have been made wards of state do sometimes end up in wilderness therapy, but the state in question will then try to recoup its costs from the child's parents - which may come as a rather nasty shock. So is wilderness therapy worth it? That's still open for debate, although the early signs are good.

Chris Fudge, admissions director at Turn-About, says that in the short term, 98% of teenagers manage to graduate. Longer term, Turn-About's success rate is about 80%, she says, judged on whether the parents are satisfied with the results or not. Reprinted from The Guardian Unlimited, UK