General Counseling Services for Children, Adolescents, and their families

This program provides assessment and counseling services, which are designed to treat each child or adolescent’s specific emotional, social, and/or physical development. This can be done on an individual basis, with family members, or in a group setting. Parent training is also offered to assist parents in improving communication, addressing parent/child conflicts, developing problem-solving skills, and enhancing overall parenting skills.

Getting Started: Clinical Screening. The Clinical Screener is the "front door" to all of KYDC's counseling services. When you call KYDC to look into counseling services, you will be put in contact with a mental health professional who will provide a clinical screening over the phone or in person. The Clinical Screener will talk with you to make sure that KYDC is the right place to have your needs met and will help you know how to get services at KYDC. The screener will also make sure that they understand the severity of your situation so that services can be started quickly, even the same day, if necessary. If KYDC is not the most appropriate place to meet your needs, the screener will help link you to other community services through our information and referral services.

Medication Assistance and Psychiatric Services. If the mental health assessment indicates that your child has a mental health disorder that can be helped through medication treatment, your therapist will talk with you about the option of a referral to a physician to explore this option. The referral may be to your Primary Care Physician or to our Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner for psychiatric services. In either case, the KYDC therapist will communicate with the doctor about their assessment so that he/she understands why you have been referred and the type of assistance you may be seeking from them. If medications are prescribed, the therapist stays in close communication with the prescribing physician to monitor the effectiveness of the medication.

Brief Solution-Focused Counseling. Sometimes a child or family only needs a few therapy sessions in order to "get back on the right track" through help with communication or to find new solutions to the problems they have been experiencing. KYDC provides brief solution-focused therapy to families that help them sort out, and find new ways to address old problems.

Intensive Outpatient Counseling Services. When problems appear to need longer or more intensive therapy services, the family can be referred to KYDC's Intensive Community-Based Treatment Services Team. Therapists and Family Care Coordinators on this team are specially trained to help children, adolescents, and families who are struggling with larger problems. In addition to individual and family therapy, intensive therapy services often include careful coordination of KYDC's therapy services with other supportive services in the community to create a "wrap around" set of services that meet the larger needs of the child and family.

Maintenance and Recovery Services. At times longer-term health maintenance assistance is needed after intensive therapy services have resolved the most severe problems. In these cases, supportive individual or group counseling aimed at helping the person maintain the positive changes they have created are provided. This can include support groups, less frequent individual or family therapy meetings, or educational groups that teach ongoing wellness and prevention strategies for mental health and general life issues.

Mental Health Consultation Services. KYDC provides mental health consultation services to numerous community partners in order to assist them in meeting the mental health and safety needs of children and adolescents with which they work. Consultation services are provided to Merle West Medical Center, Head Start, City and County school districts, courts, State Office for Services to Children and Families, Juvenile Department, Early Intervention programs, etc.

 

Find out what clients are saying about KYDC Services.

Services to over 2000 children, adolescents and their families per year rank KYDC as the major provider of services in our area of the state.