Adopt-A-Family’s onsite therapist Joan Kieffer (pictured above) is a Licensed Clinical Therapist with over 30 years of experience. She conducts individual, family, as well as group therapy sessions.
Adopt-A-Family of the Palm Beaches is helping to break the cycle of family homelessness by eliminating barriers that often prevent clients with mental health challenges from getting the care they need to stabilize and thrive.
For 40 years, Adopt-A-Family has served the Palm Beach County community by providing housing-focused services to low-income families with minor children. While these households suffer disproportionately high rates of mental illness and usually have endured numerous traumas and stresses, they are also far less likely to seek mental health care. Counseling isn’t a priority when you don’t know where you will sleep.
To complicate things further, mental health care can be too expensive, and for families without reliable transportation, too far away. Often, appointments are only available during regular business hours, which can be a problem for low-wage earners who don’t get paid if they don’t work. On occasion, Adopt-A-Family clients simply aren’t aware of the many benefits that accompany therapeutic services nor just how much their mental health contributes to their ability to maintain a stable family home.
This is why Adopt-A-Family created an innovative, low-barrier model that embeds mental health therapy services into the agency’s housing-centric programming. AAF’s Mental Health Program offers free, convenient therapy at the agency’s three locations with Joan Kiefer (pictured above) and Registered Clinical Social Work Intern Irene Sobrino, who clients see as a neighbor, rather than an outsider, and who are trained to specialize in the circumstances of families who have lived with housing instability. This innovative model creates a well-utilized, community-wide system of mental health support for clients of all ages. Parents gain coping skills to heal from past traumas and create a more stable environment for their families, which includes making more grounded, clear-headed decisions that are more likely to result in their families remaining securely housed. Children and teens recover from the emotional and social setbacks that affect their education and their relationships with peers and adults to help break generational cycles.
And it is working.
Ninety-four percent of adult clients who have attended at least three therapy sessions have remained housed, and 90% of clients felt their mental health had improved. Children make great strides in improving their social-emotional skills.
Every year, Adopt-A-Family’s Mental Health Program serves dozens of new clients who have never had the opportunity to go to therapy. It is an effective, efficient way to reach disadvantaged families who would be unlikely to avail themselves of therapy anywhere else.
Although Mental Health Awareness month wraps up at the end of May, AAF is proud to offer these life changing services year round and to provide this support to our clients on the path to physical, mental, and emotional stability.