Intervention

At Upward Community, we see the great and vast potential of every child. Upward Community provides our community’s children with the support they need to be healthy, successful and productive adults. Upward Community’s clinical services include a wide range of therapeutic interventions to help children and adolescents gain greater personal insight, grow to overcome their challenges and become their best selves.

The Mozes and Helen Stern Upward Counseling Center

The Mozes and Helen Stern Counseling Center provides assessments, referrals, and psychotherapy for children, teens and young adults in the community. At the Counseling Center, our clients receive professional care from a licensed clinician who is culturally sensitive and in tune with our clientele. We are a highly compassionate and thoughtful team who takes pride in meeting the individual needs of our clients. Our team is trained to work with clients who are struggling with a wide range of mental health challenges including anxiety, depression, self-esteem, trauma, relationship issues, stress management and more. Upward Community is paneled with select insurance companies and provides a sliding scale option to make therapy affordable for our community.

Empowered Parenting Support Groups

When a child is engaged in risky behavior or struggling with mental health, it presents additional challenges for parents. The Empowered Parenting Support Groups allows these parents to meet others going through similar experiences and feel supported in the process. The participants share ideas, strategies and tools with each other and, through their mutual support, they share hope. These groups are facilitated by experienced and accepting clinicians.

Social Skills Groups

Social communication is a necessary life skill for children to master at a young age. It is crucial for children to feel understood by the people around them and learn the tools to communicate accordingly. At Upward Community, we run a social skills program for primary school-age children. Our small groups are facilitated by a trained specialist and target specific age appropriate skills. In addition to improving their communication, children who participate in these groups learn important tools to help them build healthy friendships and succeed in school.

Art Therapy Groups

Upward Community also offers art therapy groups geared towards adolescents. The goal of these groups is to help enrich the lives of teens in our community through creative expression. In each of our art therapy groups, our talented facilitator focuses on utilizing artistic work and projects to cultivate an improved sense of self-esteem and self-awareness, emotional resilience, and enhanced social skills within the participants.

Professional Development

Teachers, principals, rabbis, and other community leaders are often the first line of defense in identifying and combating social and emotional struggles. Upward Community partners with local schools to provide guidance and resources to administration and faculty on best practices in a variety of areas facing educators today. Community leaders, such as rabbis and organizational heads, receive training and guidance appropriate for their constituencies. Topics include: Identifying substance abuse, promoting social/emotional literacy, legal aspects of mandated reporting and more. Additionally, school administration can request targeted consultations with our clinical staff to address acute issues that students may be experiencing. We are proud to provide additional training opportunities to the mental health professionals in our community including ACT, CBT, EMDR Trauma Training and other continuing education opportunities.