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Our Future:
Bridges-to-friends
Listening to the voices of our community, Bridges-to-Friends, is a program designed to bridge service gaps by incorporating self-help, parent education, innovative and more traditional family therapies; creating a comprehensive family support center for the entire Oakhurst area that focuses on improving the well-being of youth, families and ultimately our entire community. Bridges-to-Friends is so named because its primary focus is to meet unmet needs—bridging service gaps between children and parents and those services they need in schools, child welfare, mental health and, when necessary, the courts creating a seamless support network for families nurturing a more therapeutic, normalizing and inviting environment for our families. We are creating bridges over existing service gaps by connecting services to our most underserved populations in three areas of concern: (1) Insurance gaps; (2) Service gaps and; (3) Specialized needs gaps.
Bridges-to-Friends is standing in “insurance gaps” by providing preventative mental health and substance abuse services to children & families who would not otherwise qualify for county or private managed care services. Secondly, we are standing in the “service gaps” providing preventative care for at risk children and their families who may qualify for county or managed care services but the particular services these children and their parents really need aren’t available locally or for that matter regionally such as those designed to buffer the impact of traumatic stress caused by child maltreatment or behavioral modification targeted to children exhibiting symptoms along the spectrum of Autistic Disorders. Finally, we are standing in the “special needs gap” by “trouble shooting” the needs of our children already exhibiting high risk behavior who are at highest risk for functional failure. For these children we have devised Tele-Health Diagnostic Services. To qualify for this program, these children must have exhausted local resources such as: Multiple Interdisciplinary Educational Plans (IEPs), family reunification plans, and highly detailed mental health treatment plans but continue to require more highly specialized child diagnostic, consultation and treatment planning services.
For more information on Bridges-to-Friends E-Mail:
NBates@yosemitecounseling.com |
