Children’s Wellness Initiative (CWI) School-based Counseling Program

A comprehensive evaluation is often the first place to start when a child is having emotional, social, or academic difficulties at school or at home. This evaluation will determine what services will best help a child, and will also help to inform parents about treatment choices. This evaluation can be done at the child’s school, home, or at the hospital.

A parent may decide after an evaluation that counseling may help support a child. For instance, emotional and social stressors can often interfere with a child’s ability to maximize his or her potential for learning. Recognizing that children may need support for different reasons we offer treatment options that address a range of emotional, behavioral, and learning problems. This may include individual, group, family therapy and parent support. During the summer months, clinicians arrange with parents to meet with the youth at home or at camp to provide these services.

A unique component of the program is the availability of a child psychiatrist, who can further evaluate a child’s emotional or behavioral difficulty. When indicated, the psychiatrist and parent can discuss how psychiatric treatment and/or medications might be helpful to a child. Ongoing follow-up treatment at the school site is part of the service. These services are covered by insurance.

At times, a child or teen may have an emotional or mental health crisis that requires additional interventions. We are available to help the youth, families and schools manage the immediate crisis.  We also teach coping skills and support to help prevent future crisis situations.

For each child who receives CWI services, consultation is offered to help teachers understand and address emotional, social, and family factors that may affect their students. Individual consultations are available to help teacher’s foster emotional wellness in a particular child

When there are difficult issues that impact a child’s social, mental health or behavioral issues, we offer both supportive individual meetings and/or family therapy to help parents manage their unique situations. We believe that parents are the expert on their child and as such, we work collaboratively with caregivers to set therapeutic goals and treatment plans.

Case Management: We help families connect with in-home services, summer camps, insurance coverage, and other community resources that may further assist the family.

Our team provides a series of prevention workshops that are utilized in the classroom to enhance the physical and emotional wellbeing of the children we serve.

Our team can assist parents in advocating for their child’s learning needs. We attend Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings, and are able to interface with the school and the parent. We also help families connect with legal aid, insurance coverage, and community activities that may further support them.