Historical Narrative

COVID didn’t just reshape families’ comfort levels. It transformed the school system in ways that rippled outward long after the pandemic ended.

During the lockdowns, school became something entirely different. Students stayed home. Learning happened through screens – inconsistently, unevenly, and often with enormous strain on families. Districts across Canada implemented no-fail policies, promoting students to the next grade regardless of engagement, or academic performance. It was a compassionate response to an impossible situation, but it also set a precedent that lingered long after classrooms reopened.

When in-person learning resumed, many of these policies remained. Schools became increasingly reluctant to suspend or expel students, even in cases where behaviour had escalated far beyond what would once have triggered intervention. Instead, students were often given remote work packages – packets of assignments with, no accountability, and little real expectation that they be completed. And because students were still being passed from grade to grade, the consequences of disengagement felt minimal.

This shift fundamentally changed the signals that once alerted families to deeper issues.

Before COVID, families turned to Venture Academy when school breakdowns became severe — when suspensions, expulsions, or academic collapse made it clear that specialized support was needed. While teen mental health help was the primary cause of concern, school circumstances were often the primary trigger for the final decision for admission.

But after COVID, those signals and indicators disappeared.

When seriously unsafe and harmful patterns of behaviour were occurring, if a student could remain enrolled in school, avoid suspension, and continue progressing through grades — even with minimal attendance or incomplete work — many parents felt they still had time. The urgency that once pushed families to seek help was dulled.

As long as their child was technically “still in school,” even if barely attending or not completing work, even if they were struggling significantly with mental health and clinical issues, Venture Academy no longer felt like the necessary next step. This was evident inquiry after inquiry. Parents were significantly more contemplative as compared to action oriented as they were previously during the first 20 years of our operations.

This wasn’t because parents cared less. It was because the system around them changed their calculus. The thresholds that once indicated crisis were no longer there. The safety nets that once failed — painful as that was — were often the very moments that led families to seek deeper support. Without those moments, fewer families reached out.

Declining Enrollment in Our Spring and Summer Semester Programs

Before COVID, Venture Academy’s Spring and Summer Semester programs were among our most popular offerings and our busiest time of year. Families relied on them for:

• intensive tutoring support
• academic stabilization
• earning school credits
• helping students catch up and move confidently into the next grade

These programs were often a lifeline – a structured, supportive way for students to regain momentum and finish school credits in order to move on to the next grade in September.

But once school districts adopted no-fail policies and automatic grade promotion, the urgency behind these programs evaporated. If students were going to pass anyway  regardless of attendance, effort, or performance, the need for academic recovery programs for teens struggling with disabilities and learning challenges diminished. Even the way academic performance in schools was evaluated changed (no more “Fs”). What had once been a cornerstone of our service model and busiest time of year, became, almost overnight, far less relevant in the eyes of parents.

The impact of COVID on enrollment was felt across all our locations.

One Venture Academy location experienced such a dramatic and immediate drop in admissions that it needed to close during the pandemic. It wasn’t a reflection of the quality of care — it was simply the reality of operating a residential program when families were too apprehensive to have their children away from home. Admissions halted and the decision was made.

The remaining locations stayed open, but they struggled with enrollment. The census remained low, even during what had historically been our busiest time of the year — the spring and summer months when families typically sought help most urgently. Instead of full programs and waitlists, Venture Academy faced empty beds and uncertainty.

The combination of low admissions, shifting school policies, and changing family decision-making, created a visible erosion of the model that had once sustained Venture Academy for 20 years.

This shift wasn’t unique to Venture Academy. Several boarding‑school‑style programs in Canada — programs serving a similar profile of students (sometimes overlapping) and historically operating in the same space — faced similar pressures.

Two of these schools, (there may be more) closed their doors for the September 2025 school year, reportedly due to low enrollment year after year. Their closures reflected the same forces we were experiencing:

• changing parental perceptions
• shifting thresholds for concern
• normalization of behaviours once considered alarming
• and a growing mismatch between what families sought and what these programs were built to provide

The entire sector was feeling the strain.

When Venture Academy began 25 years ago, the families who reached out to us were often facing a very specific set of challenges. Their children were skipping school, or had been expelled, experimenting with marijuana or other drugs, pushing boundaries, becoming unsafe, and behaving in ways that felt deeply out of step with family values. While other families faced more severe clinical diagnoses and related challenges, for many parents, these behaviours were alarming, unfamiliar, and frightening. They were clear signals that something was wrong, their child’s future was perceived to be in jeopardy, and that prompted families to seek help.

But over the past two decades, the cultural landscape in Canada has shifted dramatically.

Legalization and Normalization Changed the Lens
Behaviours that once triggered concern — marijuana use, defiance, disengagement from school — are now viewed through a very different lens. With the legalization of cannabis and the broader normalization of substance use in many communities, what once felt like a crisis now often feels commonplace and acceptable. Open drug use in public spaces, shifting social norms, and a more permissive cultural environment have all contributed to a recalibration of what parents consider “serious.”

Our admissions team has spoken to thousands of Canadian parents over 25 years. Parents who, 20 years ago, would have been terrified by substance use now see it as “normal teenage experimentation” or acceptable within their family’s value system. The urgency that once drove families to seek help has softened to the point where the problem is not recognized or considered a problem at all– then when it is finally recognized the problem is so extreme there has been irreversible damage – even death.

Canada has made significant progress in destigmatizing mental health and substance use. This is a positive and important achievement. But it also had an unintended effect:

The early warning signs that once prompted parents to seek help became harder to recognize.

When everything is framed as normal, understandable, or part of a broader societal trend, parents often wait longer — sometimes too long — before reaching out. The behaviours that once signaled a need for intervention no longer stand out in the same way. Again -frog in the boiling water.

As a result, the families who once made up the core of Venture Academy’s community – those dealing with school avoidance, drug use, and escalating behavioural issues – largely stopped calling. Parents almost never inquired anymore citing the original client profile that defined our early years. The thought of seeking help with those issues through a residential treatment program may even be laughable to some especially a younger generation of those in the therapy or social service sector. A generational shift occurred.

Instead, the inquiries we were receiving in recent years were increasingly from families facing far more severe and complex challenges.

And while the program was adapting, these were young people who often needed a level of care beyond what Venture Academy was designed to provide and what the funding model would accommodate. As a result, an increasing number of applications had to be declined because their needs had grown beyond the scope of our model. This was often a shock to parents as they were consistently told by others that a residential treatment program was not needed. The severity of the situation (and how Venture Academy could help) was often not recognized by the family support system of school counsellors, therapists, and doctors making it even more difficult for parents to figure out how severe the problem really was. The declining enrollment combined with increased applications that could no be approved exacerbated the challenge.

A System Outgrowing Its Original Purpose

The combination of:

• shifting cultural norms
• the normalization of behaviours once considered alarming
• the destigmatization of mental health and substance use
• and the increasing severity of the cases that did come forward

created a widening gap between what Venture Academy was built to do and what families were now seeking. While the program was constantly adapting and evolving, regularly engaging outside consultants who assisted similar programs, advised government or worked for government in the social service sector, that gap widened. This circumstance will be familiar to those who have worked in the social service sector who saw institutions close, with those clients going to group homes, group home clients getting passed off to foster homes and youth normally destined for foster care only referred to “outreach services” if anything at all.

No. Venture Academy remained open throughout COVID-19. However, admissions slowed dramatically because families were apprehensive about sending their children to residential programs during the pandemic.

Even after restrictions eased, admissions never returned to pre-COVID levels. The pandemic marked a turning point that the program was never able to fully recover from.

Yes. One location experienced such a sudden and significant drop in enrollment during COVID that it closed withing the first year of the pandemic. Other locations remained open but struggled with historically low census levels — even during spring and summer, which had traditionally been the busiest seasons.

These programs were once among Venture Academy’s most popular offerings, helping students earn credits, catch up academically, and transition successfully to the next grade.

However, during COVID, school districts implemented no-fail policies and automatic grade promotion. After the pandemic, many of these policies persisted. As a result, the urgency for academic recovery programs diminished, and the Spring and Summer Semester programs became far less relevant to families.

Post-COVID, many school districts:

• avoided suspensions and expulsions
• passed students to the next grade regardless of attendance or performance
• provided remote work packages with little accountability

These changes removed the traditional “red flags” that once prompted parents to seek help. As long as a child remained technically enrolled in school, many families felt they still had time — reducing the urgency to pursue residential treatment.

When Venture Academy began, parents often sought help for behaviours like:

• skipping or school expulsion
• marijuana and other drug use
• unidentified mental health issues
• behaviour conflicting with family values and parental expectations

Today, societal norms have shifted. Cannabis is legal, substance use is more visible and acceptable, and mental health and addiction have been widely destigmatized. While these changes are positive in many ways, they also blurred the early warning signs that once led families to seek help.

Behaviours once a cause for concern, are now accepted and commonplace (this also happens from generation to generation). Parents now tend to inquire only when issues have escalated far beyond the original client profile Venture Academy was designed to support. While the program adapted, the level of self harm, suicidal ideation and attempts, the number of pre-admission hospital admissions and other severe clinical diagnoses often required (in our opinion) the level of treatment and care only found in a clinically comprehensive mental health hospital.

In recent years, families who did inquire often presented with far more severe and complex needs.

These cases frequently required clinical or intensive supports beyond Venture Academy’s scope. As a result, many applications had to be declined with parents left yet again to deal with crisis after crisis including consistent and rotating hospitalizations or their children becoming involved in government systems.

Venture Academy was not alone in facing these challenges. Several boarding-school-style programs serving similar struggling teen youth profiles also faced declining enrollment. Other mental health programs have closed (while others have opened). Two such programs (there may be more) closed their doors for the September 2025 school year, likely due to the same societal and systemic shifts.

No. There were no government orders and no regulatory actions, that mandated the closure. The decision to close was voluntarily initiated by the organization.

Yes, financial uncertainty was a contributing factor — especially during and after COVID, when admissions were low and the economic outlook was unclear.

In 2022, Venture Academy made a final, hopeful attempt to stabilize operations by hiring an executive who claimed he could secure government funding for families within “3–4 months.” This timeline later shifted to “6 months,” and then unexpectedly to “7 years” which of course was a way of admitting that there was no viable plan to secure the funding.

Ultimately, no clients were funded, and the effort failed. This final push reflected the organization’s commitment to finding solutions — but it also underscored how challenging the environment had become in the private pay adolescent mental health and addictions live-in treatment environment. While some options remain for private pay families – those programs are already funded by government – private pay is an easy add-on for those programs.

Yes. For years, the organization adapted, adjusted, and explored possible viable paths forward — including new programming, operational changes, and attempts to secure funding. Some of those options that Venture Academy was already prequalified to participate in, were outside the core mission of the program and not pursued (as it would have changed the very nature of the program).

No. Venture Academy is no longer accepting new applications.
The organization initiated its closure process and wound down all services, including post-treatment supports and consultations.

No. Venture Academy will not reopen in the future. The decision to close was made after years of monitoring trends, evaluating sustainability, and exploring every reasonable alternative. The closure is final and permanent and the organization has fully completed the process of winding down operations and voluntarily relinquishing its licenses.

Venture Academy’s team was keenly aware of the declining enrollment and were informed  about the transition and given the required notice. The reality is there were only a few staff members left near the end as the wind down had been happening over several years.

Some were already at or near retirement age and chose to retire or semi‑retire and embrace their new trajectory. Others have moved on to new opportunities in education, mental health, youth services, and related fields and others are examining their options.

The transition was gradual as admissions were halted some time ago with a natural attrition occurring as youth naturally transitioned out of the program. This was done in good faith so that no youth would be admitted then asked to suddenly leave. No youth were asked to leave early or abruptly. Only 2 remaining clients actually required notice about the closure. Every student remained in the program until their planned discharge or until their funding naturally concluded.

Venture Academy did not hold assets beyond basic operational items such as office equipment, furniture and a couple of older vans with minimal or no market value.

No. All operations at Venture Academy have fully ceased, and there is no longer anyone available to contact. The organization has completed its wind‑down process, staff have moved on to retirement or new opportunities, and all administrative functions have concluded.