Community-Based Programs

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CCAS’ commitment to service does not stop at our office door.  We believe it is essential to bring services to the community, breaking down barriers that often keep our neighbors from getting treatment.  Our community-based programs provide mental health care at no or low-cost to ensure that vulnerable, low-income, and uninsured clients get help.

 

Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies: Pregnancy-Linked and Postpartum Depression

Treating women with prenatal and postpartum depression quickly is essential to help avert long-term harm to infants and toddlers.  By addressing the mother’s depression early, we can free mothers to parent their children, foster healthy child development, and avert significant risk of abuse or neglect.  In our Gaithersburg office, we see many women who have insurance and who seek help because they believe they may have pregnancy-linked or postpartum depression. 

Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies brings our services to uninsured and underinsured women in the community, using an innovative approach to outreach.  We have trained workers in other community agencies (such as public health nurses, parent educators and family support workers) to recognize signs of depression in pregnant women and new mothers they serve.  When a worker in one of our partner agencies is concerned that a woman is depressed, she discusses depression and asks the woman if she is interested in being referred for treatment.  We also serve women who are self-referred.

If a woman agrees to get help, one of our therapists makes an appointment to assess her for depression. We provide 12 subsidized treatment sessions. We provide additional treatment on a case-by-case basis to make sure the pregnant woman or mother has made a good recovery.  We also have funding for limited psychiatric visits to evaluate and follow women whose depression is so deep it requires medication as well as talk therapy. 

We work with women where we can reach them best.  We offer clients follow-up treatment in our Gaithersburg office, and provide transportation if necessary.  Some of our clients are in Silver Spring or Wheaton, a considerable distance from our office.  We are flexible in working with these clients, and have continued to meet them in their homes, near their workplace, or in borrowed Silver Spring and Wheaton office space.  We believe this flexibility is central to keeping mothers in treatment.  We have Spanish-speaking therapists. 

Positive Aging Project: Help for Senior Citizens

Aging can an opportunity to find meaning in a life fully lived.  Yet it also can be a time of despair – despair that goes far beyond the grief and loss we experience in life.  Nearly one in five seniors has a mental health problem that is more than “normal” difficulties in adjustment.  Many do not get help. 

At our Gaithersburg office, we provide therapy to senior citizens who pay with Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance.  Our Positive Aging Project brings services out to the community. 

Designed to reach senior citizens who live independently in our community and to help them live life to its full potential, the Positive Aging Project serves three community sites: the Gaithersburg Senior Center, Holiday Park Senior Center, and an apartment complex for low-income aged and disabled residents.  Locating mental health and wellness services at these sites provides a respectful way to offer support to seniors who otherwise might hesitate to seek it out.  This program is supported by the City of Gaithersburg, private grants and donations, and a contract with a local realty company. 

While services differ somewhat from site to site, the Positive Aging Project offers:

For more information, see our article about Aging and Mental Health (Mental Health Topics).

 

Community Cares: Mental Health Care for the Uninsured

Private donations and grants enable us to work with uninsured children, adults, couples and families who need counseling but do not have insurance.  We see these uninsured clients in our Gaithersburg office and charge a sliding fee scale based on ability to pay.

A City of Gaithersburg grant supports a pilot project to provide mental health care to uninsured Gaithersburg residents.  This grant enables one of our therapists to provide mental health assessment and treatment to patients who go to the Gaithersburg Community Clinic, Inc. for primary health services.  The Community Clinic, Inc. is a private, non-profit medical clinic.  It serves a broad spectrum of low-income individuals and families:  uninsured workers, recent immigrants, senior citizens, homeless adults, and children and adolescents.  It houses the WIC program, which provides nutritional assistance to low-income pregnant women, mothers, infants and toddlers.

The Community Clinic, Inc. has donated office space so that one of our bilingual therapists can see patients referred to us by Clinic doctors.  This is an exciting partnership.  It enables us to reach clients at a facility they already trust, and that is easily accessible to them.  When clinic doctors are concerned about patients, they can literally walk them down the hall and introduce them to our therapist.