Provides child abuse and neglect prevention services, parent education and support, supervised visitation, crisis intervention, child care, and victim support.    Parenting classes are offered throughout the year, and satisfy the requirements for mandatory court-ordered parenting classes.

Children's Advocacy Center offered at Connections: A Center for Healthy Families

Provides child abuse and neglect prevention services, parent education and support, supervised visitation, crisis intervention, child care, CASA, and victim support. Call for details. Space is limited.

Programs, often offered in the schools or in other community settings, that attempt to protect children from physical, sexual and/or emotional abuse or exploitation through a variety of educational interventions which may focus on children of various ages, parents, people who work with children and/or the community at large. The sessions may offer suggestions for children and/or parents regarding ways of avoiding or handling an abusive or potentially abusive situation and/or information about the indicators and incidence of abuse, requirements for reporting abuse and community resources that are available to children who have been abused and to their families.

Child Abuse Prevention

Programs that provide crisis, short-term and/or ongoing counseling for people who are coping with the emotional trauma of being forced to engage in sexual intercourse or other sexual acts without their consent. Included are military sexual trauma (MST) counseling programs offered by facilities operated by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, which address the needs of veterans who have been traumatized by having experienced assault or repeated threatening sexual harassment which occurred while serving on active duty in the military. Counseling and support may be offered in a variety of settings and may include individual, conjoint, family and group therapy sessions for the survivor and/or significant others.

Sexual Assault Counseling

Programs that provide an opportunity for people who are emotionally distressed and/or for their significant others to meet face-to-face with someone who has been trained to assess and resolve the immediate crisis, if possible, and to link the person with appropriate resources for ongoing assistance.

In Person Crisis Intervention

Programs that intercede on behalf of individuals to help them establish eligibility for or obtain needed services when they have been denied benefits or services for which they are eligible, when they need assistance to communicate their needs to a service provider or to otherwise effectively represent themselves, or when they have a complaint about a service. Individual advocacy attempts to reach equitable settlements without resorting to litigation and seeks to meet individual needs without attempting to change social institutions.

Individual Advocacy

Programs that provide therapeutic interventions for individuals and/or families who are experiencing child abuse including abandonment, neglect, or emotional, physical or sexual abuse by a parent, guardian, or other family or extended family member whom the child trusts and who is in a position of power over the child. Counseling is offered in a variety of settings and may include individual, conjoint, family and group therapy sessions for the child, the abusing or non-abusing parent(s) and siblings. Separate sessions may be available for young children who have been victimized and for older children in their teens.

Child Abuse Counseling

Programs that offer any of a wide variety of resources including books, audiotapes, video cassettes and learning games that provide information, techniques and suggestions for activities which enable parents to be more effective in their parenting role.

Parenting Materials

Multi-service family support program offers outpatient mental health services for children and families. Services include case management, brief intervention treatment, less restrictive alternative support and family, group and individual therapy.  Agency provides DBHR-certified service(s).

Outpatient Counseling Services offered at Akin - West Plains Office

Provides child and family counseling services. Helps clients build a stronger family through communication, stress management, parenting and problem-solving skills. Accepts Medicaid and offers sliding scale fees.

Programs that offer therapeutic sessions that focus on the system of relationships and communication patterns among family members and which attempt to modify those relationships and patterns to achieve greater harmony. The therapist focuses on the family as a unit rather than concentrating on one of the members who is singled out as the person in need of treatment.

Family Counseling

Programs that provide structured opportunities for parents to engage in a particular recreational activity or sport in cooperation with their infants or young children, or to participate in teaching their youngsters a particular leisure-time skill.

Parent/Child Instruction

Programs that teach skills that enable parents to deal constructively and consistently with a broad spectrum of child rearing problems which may include sibling rivalry; school behavior and performance; poor self-esteem; shyness; drug use; sexual promiscuity; and the whole range of negative, acting-out behaviors including whining, temper tantrums, disobedience, insolence and destructiveness. Some parenting skills development programs utilize a step-by-step approach for managing specific problems and may incorporate application at home of techniques that were discussed and practiced in the classroom setting. Other programs may offer participatory family workshops which provide opportunities for parents and children to learn and practice methods for dealing with one another under the guidance of a trained facilitator. Most training programs teach the parent a particular way of talking and relating to their children that reinforces positive behaviors and communication and decreases negative behaviors while supporting the development of a relationship that is built on fairness, mutual caring and respect.

Parenting Skills Classes

Programs that provide a wide variety of therapeutic interventions for parents who are experiencing emotional difficulties or conflicts concerning their role as parents. Included are individual or group counseling for one or both parents or conjoint parent counseling which focuses on and explores the mental, emotional or social problems of the individual(s) which contribute to their parenting problems.

Parent Counseling

Mutual support groups for parents who share a common characteristic or circumstance such as being single parents, dual career parents, multiple birth parents, parents with children who are out of control, or parents of children with disabilities, who come together for educational and social purposes as well as for mutual support. Meeting formats may include in-person, telephone or Internet options.

Parent Support Groups

Programs that provide a wide variety of social services that are designed to support the healthy development of families, improve family interaction skills and help fragile families to resolve their problems at a pre-crisis stage before they become unmanageable.  Services may be center-based or provided on an outreach basis to families who are initially reluctant to seek support and generally target the specific needs of a particular community.  Included may be self-sufficiency programs which help families break the cycle of poverty by addressing the barriers to self-sufficiency; early child development and school success programs; programs which address the needs of teen parents; programs which target parents at risk for becoming abusive; programs for families with children who have special developmental needs and programs that focus on the maternal and child health care needs of first-time, expectant women whose babies are at high risk for low birth weight and infant mortality.

Family Resource Centers/Outreach

Programs that employ the Wraparound Facilitation model, a family centered, community-oriented, strengths based and highly individualized approach to meet the needs of children with complicated, multi-dimensional problems. The approach involves the development of a child and family team which creates and implements a wraparound plan that identifies a set of community services and natural supports to promote success, safety, and permanence in home, school and community. The Wraparound facilitator coordinates team meetings and ensures the team identifies and prioritizes goals, provides crisis and safety planning, and tracks the family's progress towards goal attainment.  The family is prepared and supported as they transition from formal services to independence. While the major initiative to develop Wraparound Facilitation originated with the mental health system and has been particularly successful for children and adolescents with severe emotional and behavioral problems, the intervention is being employed in a number of other child service sectors including education, juvenile justice and child welfare.

Wraparound Facilitation/Community Support

Outpatient facilities that offer a variety of counseling services for individuals, couples, families and extended family groups who may be experiencing difficulty resolving personal or interpersonal conflicts or making personal adjustments to stressful life situations such as separation, divorce, widowhood, loss of a child, poor health, unemployment, family violence, delinquency or substance abuse.

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Children's Advocacy Center offered at Connections: A Center for Healthy Families

Outpatient Counseling Services offered at Akin - West Plains Office