Family Mental Health Services

Keeping Families Strong Program

The Keeping Families Strong Program plays the key role of intervening with families with risk factors who are identified by Appleseed’s partner agencies to be at risk for having their children removed from the home due to behavioral and/or mental health concerns or who are experiencing severe reactions to traumas and abuse. Families and children who experience trauma often display a high level of risk factors. These families often want concrete tools to move beyond their situation for the family to recover from severe reactions to traumas and abuse. This program uses the Integrative Family and Systems Treatment (I-FAST) and the Family Systems Trauma (FST) models to effectively treat trauma while involving the entire family and their natural support systems.

Improving mental health services for families and their children is crucial to the overall health of our community. The I-FAST model is an evidence-based supported family treatment model and follows The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Practice Parameter for the Assessment of the Family. Treatment focuses on specific symptoms and problems that parents identify as their main concerns. This model utilizes both the agency and clients' strengths and resources and is effective in bringing positive outcomes in families that have children and adolescents with severe emotional and behavioral problems. -I-FAST

The FST technique is a component of the evidence-based model, Parenting Love & Limits® (PLL) System of Care. According to the PLL logic model, the goal of the FST technique is to use structural and strategic family therapy directives to address the family or individual’s unhealed wounds in the here-and-now from a family systems perspective. Through these techniques, benefits include a reduction in risk factors and increase in protective factors.-FST

The Keeping Families Strong program is funded in part by Ashland County United Way.

Services

Mental Health Services: Education and training individuals and families on anger management, interpersonal communication, goal-setting, positive and consistent parenting, stress management, conflict resolution, healthy problem-solving, positive social skills, and other areas related to family and interpersonal relationships. KFS staff also link families to appropriate necessary services as well as advocate for families to other entities such as courts, schools, medical, education, government agencies, and other social services.

Individual and Family Counseling Services: Relationship and marriage counseling, individual counseling, group counseling and support, offer 24-hour hotline crisis intervention support, and home-based family counseling. Counselors may meet with families in their homes so they may be treated in their natural environment. Families participating in case management receive additional supplemental therapeutic individual and/or family counseling services through this program.

Risk Factors

Families with a history of mental illness
Children from low-income households
Low education
Highly stressed or isolated families
Single parent families
Families where there is considerable occupational and/or marital discord
Maternal depression
Substance use disorder
Ineffective communication
Aggressive or hostile behavior
Children whose parents discipline approaches are inconsistent/unpredictable, physically abusive, or critical
Families with one or more children who are at-risk of out-of-home placement

Benefits

Youth are less likely to be removed from the home
The family has an increased positive behavior and mental health
Increased parent involvement
Decreased trauma levels
Increased family functioning
Decrease in criminal recidivism or return to foster care
Fewer days of residential or foster car
Fewer psychiatric and behavioral diagnoses

Recent Updates

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month

If you are in a circumstance in which you are being abused in anyway physically, emotionally, or sexually reach out for help. You deserve to be treated well and in a safe, caring relationship. Help is available by calling Appleseed’s Safe Haven program 24-hour crisis hotline at 419-289-8085. Visit www.safehavenofashland.org for more information.

Appleseed reaches GuideStar’s highest Seal of Transparency for the Second Year in a Row

Appleseed earned the 2020 Platinum Seal of Transparency, the highest level of recognition offered by GuideStar, a service of Candid. By sharing metrics that highlight the progress that Appleseed is making toward its mission, the organization is helping donors move beyond simplistic ways of nonprofit evaluation such as overhead ratios.

Safe Haven Announces Events to Honor Domestic Violence Awareness Month

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Domestic Violence is the willful intimidation as part of a systemic pattern of power and control perpetrated by an intimate partner against another and happens across all genders, ages, races, and other demographics. This abusive behavior may include physical, emotional, psychological, financial, or sexual abuse. Safe Haven is holding several events to honor victims and survivors of domestic violence throughout October. All events are free and open to the public.

Fantastic staff. Therapists and psychiatrists that actually listen to you