Family Connections

Department of children and families - Family support and reunification: giving families the tools and support they deserve so that they can stay together, to bond and thrive. These Family support programs include (1) therapeutic, supervised visitation and support services throughout essex, passaic, morris and sussex counties; (2) supportive housing, counseling and care management in essex, passaic, hudson, bergen, and union counties, for families in which parents have a history of co-occuring substance use and mental illness; (3) the strong mothersand strong fathers programs: gender-specific intensive outpatient (iop) substance use treatment enhanced with parenting and life skills training. (4) Family counseling is a large part of all these programs, to foster a strong Family unit by offering intensive, home-based counseling and support services that give both parents and children a sense of safety, stability and self worth; (5) youth supportive housing: supportive housing, counseling, and care management services for youth in union county who are aging out of the nj dcpp foster care system.

There are multiple programs at Family Connections supported through the department of children and families (dcf).1) school-based youth programs: school-based youth services programs(sbysps) provide on-site services in five schools to meeting pre-teens and teens in their own environment in a safe, welcoming space, to share challenges and learn effective coping strategies. The program delivers mental health counseling, life skills training, prevention programming, recreational activites, academic support and employment support. The locations of the programs are (1) the space at orange high school, (2) the zone at orange preparatory academy, 3) the loft at columbia high school, (4) the hub at maplewood middle school and (5) the den at bloomfield highschool. 2) otary program (outreach to at-risk youth) provides youth with group-based counseling for pregnancy prevention, violence preventionand gang involvement prevention. 3) parents as teachers (pat) provides in-home support for pregnant women and parents of children 0-4 years old. Supports include parenting skills coaching, infant screenings for developmental milestones, and provision of essentials such as diapers and formula.

Certified community behavioral health clinic (ccbhc) services have allowed us to combine our mental health and substance use services together with basic primary heathcare and other resources to create our integrated behavioral health services (ibhs): these programs include outpatient mental health; bi-lingual clinical services; culturally-competent mental health services for local veterans and their families; wellness house intensive outpatient treatment for people living with serious and persistent mental illness; outpatient substance use programs; medication assisted treatment for substance use disorders and; alcohol and drug abuse prevention. The programs enhance personal and Family coping skills, insight, motivation and independence through the provision of individual and Family counseling for all ages. The outpatient substance abuse program helps adults achieve and sustain recovery and rebuild their lives through making better choices. Medication assisted treatment uses medications in combination with counseling, to treat opioid use. Our alcohol and drug abuse prevention coalition employs environmental strategies to reduce and prevent underage drinking and drug abuse, including prescription drug abuse. Cultural competency for opioid treatment providers (cc-otp) provides statewide cultural competence training and ongoing support for licensed opioid treatment providers to improve the quality and efficacy of their services to adults with opioid use disorder. "help for heroes" is our statewide peer welness program for peer support specialists working with adults with opioid use disorder. This program provides peer specialists with individual and grup counseling, self-compassion skills, wellness activities, and open peer discussion groups all designed to reduce compassion fatigue and burnout and increase resiliency and wellness.

Domestic violence services: dreams of essex is a program for women andchildren who are victims of domestic violence, using creative artstherapies, group and individual counseling. Program service accomplishments: dreams provides a safe space for families to express emotions, heal from trauma, rediscover their strengths and build their dreams.juvenile justice programs: includes a program for juveniles that offersprevention and treatment for youth charged with inappropriate sexualbehaviors.older adult programs: seniorconnections and caregiverconnections provide in-home and near-home counseling, advocacy, education and caremanagement for seniors and senior caregivers. Take control of yourhealth delivers evidence-based classes to improve the health andwellbeing of older adults living with chronic conditions.our essex county regional coalition works with area lgbtqia+ organizations to establish baseline data to demonstrate the need for and importance of community- and school-level prevention activities targeted at lgbtqia+ youth and adults. Nationwide, this population is at higher risk of opioid and synthetic opioid use and therefore at higher risk of opioid-related overdoses and death. Our coalition leads campaigns for greater awareness and prevention activities to reduce this risk among lgbtqia+ youth and adults.