September 27, 2024
Traumatized children find mental health therapy beneficial
A Ventura County community-based nonprofit provides counselors to help psychologically traumatized children.
Alejandra Carrasco, left, director of mental health and trauma treatment, and Victoria Council, clinical services manager, at Interface Children and Family Services.
When a 4-year-old hides in the clothes dryer to avoid a sexual predator, it takes a team of mental health and trauma care providers to bring her out safely.
For most people, such a scenario is unimaginable. But not for the team members at Interface Children and Family Services. They are the people who may be called upon in extremely challenging situations like this.
The Ventura County, California, nonprofit and Kaiser Permanente grant recipient provides comprehensive social and mental health services to meet the needs of vulnerable children and their families. Since 2016 Kaiser Permanente in Southern California has granted more than $230,000 to support the critical programs Interface Children and Family Services provides to the community.
Guiding children and parents through trauma
Most referrals to the program come from the County of Ventura, and some come from local schools and community nonprofits. Bilingual counselors evaluate and treat sexual abuse victims through a 19-week program. The sessions, which take place in Ventura and Oxnard, California, are supervised by a licensed clinical social worker or marriage and family therapist. The program leads groups of children to talk about or act out their experiences of neglect or abuse, or the indirect trauma of having witnessed domestic violence or other crimes. Very young children engage mostly in play therapy with one another.
“The stories that impact me the most are when the abuser was the other parent,” said Alejandrina Carrasco, director of mental health and trauma treatment at Interface.
Interface clinicians also counsel the children’s nonoffending parents in separate groups, helping them deal with the family trauma and plan for a better future.
“Part of our work is bringing support to the children’s caregivers to accept what has happened, deal with their guilt, make some decisions about how they’re going to navigate and what they can really do to support their children,” said Carrasco.
Achieving results and supporting our mission
The ability to work with small groups of children and parents helps Interface counselors achieve observable results. This is made possible in part by ongoing grant funding from Kaiser Permanente, said Stacia Swanson, chief development officer at Interface. “We have to piece together so many different funding sources to make these programs happen,” she said. “We’re really grateful for Kaiser Permanente’s support, which helps us meet the psychological needs of traumatized children and their families in our community.”
Learn more about resources that support social health.
