Giving First for February 2025: Arlington Youth Counseling Center

Giving First Recipient for February 2025

Each Sunday, the offering collected during worship is split between the support of First Parish and another organization chosen by the Social Justice Committee. For February, the Arlington Youth Counseling Center will share half of the plate.

The Arlington Youth Counseling Center (AYCC) is a state-licensed, community-based mental health center serving Arlington youth (ages 3-21) and their families. AYCC is the leading provider of outpatient and school-based child and adolescent mental health services in Arlington, offering individual, group, and family counseling, psychiatric evaluation, and medication management. Central to its mission, AYCC is committed to ensuring that all community youth and families have access to comprehensive, culturally sensitive, and high-quality mental health care, regardless of their ability to pay. In the past fiscal year, 22% of our clients had public insurance or received grant funding to help cover the costs of care. In addition to mental health services, AYCC oversees First Step- a support group for victims and survivors of domestic violence.

In the last fiscal year, we served over 450 clients with 148 new clients and conducted over 9800 sessions. The Arlington Youth Counseling Center also provided school-based counseling through “Project Success” to 111 students.

This past fall, the Counseling Center hired a bi-lingual clinician (Spanish/English) to better serve Spanish speaking members of our community. We also offered a six-week caregiver support group, incorporating the concepts of collaborative problem solving for parents. Finally, this past summer, we offered Solution Focused Brief Therapy for 10 clients – a short-term, strength-based approach to addressing needs.

The Arlington Youth Counseling Center recently launched a new website at ayccma.org It includes, among other content, information on our extensive team of clinicians, and a monthly “tip” or suggestion from a clinician on a game, book or tool caregivers may use with children.

The Arlington Youth Counseling Center is grateful for the generosity of this community which enables us to serve the mental health needs of Arlington families. Thank you for your support.

Please give generously.

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