Morris L. Black Counseling Center
The outpatient mental health clinic provides psychiatric services to children and adults. This is only one of two clinics that services children, adolescents and their families on Staten Island. Services include individual, family, couples and group therapy and medication management.
The population served faces challenges and impaired functioning related to diagnosis such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Bi-Polar disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety, ADHD, Conduct disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, to highlight a few. Therapists often play a major role in linking children and the families to much needed community resources.
Home and Community Based Services Waiver Program
The Home and Community Based Services’ Waiver Program is an intensive in home case management service designed to provide skill building, crisis intervention and respite to youth and their families.
Children’s Mobile Crisis Team (CMCT)
The Children’s Mobile Crisis Team provides rapid response services to children age 0 to 17 experiencing acute mental health crises in the Staten Island Community. The Children’s Mobile Crisis Team is designed to reduce 911 calls as well as the number of children referred to psychiatric emergency rooms. In addition, The Children’s Mobile Crisis Team provides short-term therapeutic support to children while connecting them to long-term mental health support services such as psychiatry, therapy and case management services.
The Children’s Mobile Crisis Team provides free services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and responds to a child in crisis within 2 hours of receiving a referral. Moreover, the program is the only mobile crisis unit operating on Staten Island that specifically addresses children’s imminent mental health needs.
Home-Based Crisis Intervention Program (HBCI)
The Home Based Crisis Intervention Program is a short-term 4 intensive program for children 5-17, designed to stabilize youth at risk for psychiatric re-hospitalization. At the completion of this 4-6-week program, referrals are made to one of the case management programs for ongoing care.
The Family Resource Center
A peer-run advocacy program that provides formal and informal family support services to children and their families annually who are experiencing emotional, behavioral, or mental health challenges in their home, school or community. Services are individualized and are offered to children and parents of all ages at no cost.
The primary goal is to link families to support services that reduce parents’ stress by strengthening relationships between parents/caregivers and children, increasing their ability to make informed decisions, advocating for their children’s needs while navigating the children’s mental health and other child-serving systems, thereby enhancing their child’s ability to live successfully in the community.
Children’s Care Management
The Children’s Care Management Program serves seriously emotionally disturbed children ages 0 – 24, who are experiencing a functional disability or whose families have proven unable to engage in needed services. The children who receive case management services have complex trauma histories that manifest in symptoms of depression, suicidality, and self abuse. The program provides services to children and families that are also confronted with challenges that range from daily life stressors, traumatic consequences of acute or chronic illness, emotional, sexual and physical abuse, loss, separation from their families through foster care, physical and developmental disabilities, family and community violence and social/economic hardship.