Serve Your City: Grove Counseling Center
With a long history of hope and healing, The Grove Counseling Center has flourished into a Central Florida nonprofit built from the community’s need for services. A focus on those living with a mental illness or suffering from substance abuse allows The Grove to enhance the ability of many individuals and families to succeed in life. Support from community partners has created a growing and positive environment for not only The Grove and its programs, but also those we serve.
Breaking the cycle is a strong focus for many community agencies. Prevention programs in Title 1 elementary schools allow The Grove to target students who are distracted from their academics and social interactions because of issues at home or peer pressure at school. A weekly session with an ALPHA counselor can make a world of difference when a student is faced with normalizing unhealthy decisions. Fighting the stigma strongly attached to mental illness at a young age is a fight we intend on supporting through our prevention programs.
Many times a youth starts his or her journey with The Grove in the Juvenile Justice or Child Welfare system with a trauma background. Finances can be further strained when a youth finds themselves in trouble with the law. The Grove’s Juvenile Drug Court program provides a youth the opportunity to seek treatment as an alternative to entering the criminal justice system. The Wraparound Process incorporates the family structure and connects them to counselors and mentors. The need does not stop here as many individuals and families are in need of housing, transportation, food and a more intensive treatment plan. When this need is made aware, our clients are linked to our other services.
The Grove Academy serves as a safe place for teens to live for three to six months and involves counseling, life skill courses, Florida Virtual School, and a new start. Making services available is a top priority for The Grove. Unstable finances can delay treatment but a day at The Academy can cost as low as two dollars a day. Not all teens are fortunate enough to have an invested family through the recovery process. Those coming from the Child Welfare system can take on recovery alone but with a devoted staff, a teen has a chance to focus on a stronger and healthier future.
We see the impact niceSERVE has on the community. Simply because Summit Church partners understand the needs some of our struggling families have, thirty backpacks were dropped off for the new school year. Each season brings new difficulties .The holidays weigh heavily on our youth with no family support and many times, a teenager will spend the holidays at The Academy. Each client has unique struggles and The Grove strives to bring hope and healing to each one.