Outpatient Mental Health Programs Description

Parenting Skills Training: this program offers court approved psych-educational groups to train parents in the ages and stages of their children’s development. The classes also address the necessary skills for the parents to successfully understand and raise healthy children. As needed, the program offers individual interaction for parents with specific needs.

Child-Parent Psychotherapy: this service includes dyadic therapy for parents and their children under 3 years of age to address an un-formed or mal-formed parent-child bond. The program also provides therapeutic intervention for children less than 5 years of age.

Supervised Visitation: This service is provided to families that have had their children removed by the Department of Children and Families.  It allows the parent the opportunity to meet with the child in a safe, nurturing environment. Visits can take place from once a week to three times a week, depending on the court order. The length of each visit is also determined by the judge overseeing the case.  It is typically between one and two hours, two or three times per week.

Therapeutically Supervised Visitation: This type of visitation involves the utilization of a Master’s or Doctoral level mental health professional for continuously supervised visitation. There is an underlying assumption that: (1) the child was likely abused and/or neglected and is likely to be fragile in his/her mental health, and/or (2) the parent/caretaker is known to be abusive and/or neglectful of the child.  Additionally, there is an underlying assumption that the parent/caretaker is not trustworthy, is pathological in his/her personal functioning and/or pathological in his/her parental functioning, and needs to be monitored intensively by a mental health professional.  The supervising professional usually needs to make contemporaneous clinical judgments about the parenting and give assertive instructions and guidance to the parent/caretaker.  Furthermore, it is felt by the staff and the court that the relationship between the child and the parent/caretaker is fragile, prone to pathological process, and frequently stressful to the child.  In this type of supervised visitation, the professional supervisor often has to assertively instruct and guide the parent/caretaker.

All our therapists are Florida Licensed or License eligible and registered interns with the State of Florida.