Bright Harbor Healthcare's Grief & Trauma Center for Children & Families. - Bright Harbor Healthcare (BHH) intends to provide grief- and trauma-related services to the underserved and under-resourced children, adolescents, and families, in our community, who have experienced trauma and traumatic events. BHH plans to address the unmet behavioral health needs of this vulnerable population by providing timely access to services through our Grief & Trauma Center for at least 150 children, adolescents, and families annually. This will be accomplished by expanding our Children & Families outpatient programming to include the BHH Grief & Trauma Center (GTC). The GTC staff will be comprised of a clinical team who is specialized in treating children and their families who may have or are at risk of experiencing Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Over the course of 5 years, GTC will provide individual, family and group therapy to youth and families struggling with emerging trauma-related difficulties such as depression, anxiety, inadequate social skills and negative self-esteem. GTC will support their mental health and wellness needs by providing a safe, nurturing environment where they can receive comprehensive assessment, treatment, linkage and, if needed, fulfill the goal of family reunification through therapeutic supervised visitation services. The goal of the GTC is to raise the standard of care by offering effective, evidenced based, trauma- and grief-focused treatment to 750 children, adolescents, and their families, who experience traumatic events over the next 5 years. GTC intends to work in collaboration with Category II, TSA Center to promote awareness and education while improving the treatment outcomes for this underserved population. Thus, reducing the chances of long-term mental, emotional, and physical consequences to children, adolescents, and their families, who experience traumatic events . BHH seeks to identify and implement community strategies to increase awareness of, participation in, and access to trauma and grief treatment and services for at-risk children, adolescents, and their families inclusive of those from diverse racial and ethnic communities. The BHH GTC intends to accomplish this with the development and implementation of specialty clinical positions in the areas of LGBTQIA+, Substance Use Disorder (SUD), as well as Grief & Trauma Community Response. These specialty positions will not only provide clinical services but will provide clinical consultation services, as liaisons to the community, who will consult and provide education on the general space and environment. These services will be open to all requesting assistance to ensure their space is culturally competent, inclusive and inviting to children, adolescents, and their families who have experienced trauma and traumatic events. The BHH GTC specialty clinicians’ role will also include responsibilities of partnering with the community to promote advocacy and decrease stigma by providing education at community-based events and responding to critical evens in our community when requested to provide support and/or debriefing.
