Published: September 2, 2026 | Telos Programs

Today, Telos is taking a step that few programs in the youth residential treatment industry have taken: we are publicly publishing our client restraint data, updated every quarter, for every campus.

We believe this is what leadership looks like. Families searching for care for their child deserve more than reassurances — they deserve numbers they can actually look at, ask questions about, and hold us accountable to.

What a Restraint Actually Is

A restraint — also called a therapeutic hold — happens when a staff member physically steps in to keep a client safe when they are at risk of hurting themselves or someone else. It is never used as punishment, and it is never for staff convenience. Every restraint exists for one reason only: to protect the people in our care.

All Telos staff are nationally certified by the Crisis Prevention Institute (CPI) in de-escalation and safe physical intervention. De-escalation always comes first. A hold is a last resort, never a first response.

Why We’re Publishing This Now

The youth residential treatment industry has faced real and warranted scrutiny in recent years over the use of restraint and seclusion. Too often, the public has been asked to simply trust that a program is safe, with no way to verify that claim. We don’t think that’s good enough — for families, or for the field as a whole.

Publishing our restraint rate is part of a broader commitment we’ve made to transparency, alongside our published position papers on behavior management, abuse prevention and reporting, and outcomes research. Data-driven accountability shouldn’t be the exception in this industry. We’re publishing ours in the hope that it becomes the norm.

Our Data

The figures below show restraints per 1,000 client days at each Telos campus, updated quarterly.

Dashes indicate a quarter that has not yet closed or a campus for which quarterly tracking has recently begun. This table will be updated as each quarter’s data is finalized.

Understanding the Numbers

The phrase “per 1,000 client days” can sound confusing at first, so here’s what it means in plain terms.

A client day is simply one day of care for one client. If we have 50 clients in a program for a full 90-day quarter, that adds up to 4,500 client days.

We use this rate — rather than a simple count of restraints — because the number of clients in our care changes from quarter to quarter, and a raw count wouldn’t tell you much on its own. A program with more clients will naturally have more total restraints even if its practices are just as safe, or safer, than a smaller program. Calculating the rate per 1,000 client days lets you compare quarters fairly, whether we have 20 clients in care or 80, and gives you a true sense of how often physical intervention is happening relative to how many young people we’re actually serving.

Watching this number over time helps our clinical team — and you — see whether our de-escalation practices are working, and it holds us accountable to doing better every quarter.

Our Commitment Going Forward

This is the beginning, not the end, of what we plan to share. As more quarters close across all our campuses, this page will be updated with complete, current data. We invite parents, referring professionals, and other programs in this field to hold us to this standard — and we hope others in the industry will join us in publishing their own.

Questions about our restraint data or behavior management policies? Contact our admissions team or read our full Behavior Management Policy Position Paper.