Mental Health, Wellness, and Therapy Services

Mental Health and Wellness at Ascencia

The Wellness Department is a team of Case Managers who help service clients with mental health issues and/or physical disabilities. These case managers are trained professionals who provide comprehensive support to individuals with complex needs. Wellness case managers work closely with each client to create a customized care plan that addresses all of their mental and physical health concerns. This includes coordinating medical appointments, providing counseling and therapy services, and connecting clients with community resources. 

Health, both mental and physical, can be a barrier to housing and stability when you don’t have the proper care or resources to help you. Ascencia bridges this gap by helping clients to work through trauma and remove barriers.

Children's Art Therapy

Trauma Therapy

Trauma Therapy is an approach that recognizes and emphasizes how traumatic experiences impact an individual’s mental, behavioral, emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being.

Ascencia contracts with licensed therapists who work with our clients to unpack their experiences and offer them skills, strategies, and other tools to assist them with coping with, understanding, and processing their emotions and memories tied to these traumatic experiences.

By healing traumatic experiences and teaching coping mechanisms, clients are one step closer to the life that they want and deserve.

Group Therapy

Tele-Psychiatry

Telepsychiatry, a subset of telehealth, involves providing a range of services including psychiatric evaluations, therapy (individual therapy, group therapy, family therapy), patient education and medication management. The intention of telehealth across all types of health care is to provide additional access to care by reducing barriers including needing transportation, child or care, or time off work in order to meet with your doctor.

Mental health issues go untreated when people don’t have the money or resources to access the care they need. This proves to be a consistent barrier to housing, which is why we find it so important to offer this service to our clients.

Our Telepsychiatry services assist our clients experiencing homelessness in reducing mental health barriers to help them to stabilize in the course of securing and maintaining permanent housing.

Children’s Art Therapy

Art therapy uses creative mediums like drawing, painting, coloring, and sculpture. Clients are invited to move their bodies, paint, write, and draw and use music to explore and express their emotions and feelings with the hopes of learning, in a sensory way, about the power of the arts for healing and transformation.

Ascencia contracts with a licensed Art Therapist who comes on-site multiple times per week to conduct sessions with clients.

This form of therapy is used to assist our young clients to express and explore their own traumatic episodes in an environment and manner that is familiar to them.

Children's Art Therapy
 

Wellness is an essential role in combating homelessness. We all have one mind, one body, and one soul and keeping these parts healthy is part of the housing goal.

Raymond ColeHospital Liaison, Wellness, and Enhanced Care Manager

Occupational Therapy

Occupational Therapy
In partnership with West Coast University’s Occupational Therapy Program, Ascencia provides occupational engagement and group-based interventions to foster health promotion, housing placement, and stability. Our partners offer a variety of activities with clients such as mental health exercises, stress-relief techniques, and motor functioning activities.  

West Coast University’s Occupational Therapy program is based on the belief that all humans are occupational beings in nature and in the healing power of occupation whereby humans can influence their own health status. Ascencia holds OT workshops at least once a week, led by our OT interns. Some previous workshops included: “Healthy Eating”, “How to Save Money”, “Handling Conflict”, and much more.

Financial Literacy

Achieving financial security requires more than just balancing a budget. Even before individuals and families experiencing homelessness have access to income, whether through employment or social supports, they need to recognize themselves as assets that can be engaged to achieve their desired outcomes. Our Financial Literacy courses teach clients how to build financial sustainability. By providing them the tools and allowing them opportunities to practice these tools through field trips, to assess mastery and skill level.

Photo depicting financial planning