Bridge Youth and Family Services

The Bridge helps families achieve social and emotional health by providing crisis intervention, comprehensive counseling and therapy services, and a mentoring program aimed at prevention.

Family Stabilization:
This team was established to address the unique needs of two distinct categories of vulnerable youth: (a) youth experiencing homelessness, runaway youth, and/or locked-out youth and (b) at risk youth, those with police involvement, substance use, and/or truancy. The initial goal of any crisis driven intervention is to deflect youth from more invasive systems such as DCFS and Juvenile Justice. Our team of master’s level counselors provide intensive individual and family counseling to restore the family and repair the issues leading to presenting problems. Through our relationships with over 70 schools and 13 police precincts, our goal is to intervene swiftly to the needs of our youth and families as they are identified. The Bridge works in partnership with local DCFS licensed shelters who provide a respite bed for youth who are unable to return home during a crisis period. This cooling off period allows our clinicians an opportunity to work with children and families separately to reduce the stress related to pressing family issues. Our return home rate remains steady at 96%. Once the team ameliorates the initial family breakdown, children and families are offered 90 days of free counseling services to provide the tools for lasting change and success.

Family Intervention
This team was established to respond to the community need for affordable and accessible mental health services. Our team has adopted the model of Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy as our evidenced based model to address child and adolescent anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. In addition to our agency model, individual clinicians use, but are not limited to, art therapy, traditional talk therapy, play therapy, and group therapies to help youth and families achieve social and emotional health. Our team of clinicians includes social workers, psychologists, and marriage and family therapists who work collaboratively to address each individual child and family. We have a full team of Spanish speaking clinicians and intake specialists who work with our Spanish speaking families (60% of our total caseload). Most of our clients are at or below the poverty level, and without our support would have limited access to services.

Mentoring:
This team was established to offer augmentative services to children ages 11-18 who need additional support and another caring adult who can help guide them. This team is comprised of 2 staff and up to 40 volunteers who are paired with a mentee. The goals of this program are prevention, school achievement, and successful transition to emerging adulthood.