CFAR’s Community Wellness Program was developed to allow CFAR to address the significant need for innovative and responsive mental health education and programming to help Philadelphia communities that struggle with access to care. This program brings together some of our ongoing work, as well as unique pilot projects. We leverage partnerships and aim to respond to emerging needs. For more information, please contact development@cfarcounseling.org. Current and prospective Community Wellness programming includes:

• Community wellness events: Education and awareness are the first steps to engaging the community in mental health services, so we hold several events each year. We bring people together with games and food, and we raise awareness through wellness activities, mental health resources, and educational materials. Read more about our events here.
• Outreach: We also educate and raise awareness through outreach, including tabling at partner events, engaging in convenings, and participating in panel discussions and speaking engagements.
• Internship program: There is a severe shortage of mental health professionals in Philadelphia, and these shortages most heavily impact our most vulnerable communities who already have limited access to care. To help address this shortage, CFAR has been working to grow our internship program to train diverse and culturally competent therapists that specialize in working with youth and families.
• Benefits navigation: With the changing landscape of Medicaid, we are redoubling our efforts to help our clients stay enrolled or help them re-enroll in Medicaid. In addition, our clients often rely on various public benefits like SNAP and LIHEAP to survive. The guidelines and process for enrolling in benefits like these is often cumbersome and confusing, so we are working on various ways to support benefits navigation. This includes educating our staff about resources and bringing in benefits navigation specialists to work with our clients.
• Youth wellness fund: In light of the ongoing changes to Medicaid from the federal level, CFAR is working to develop a Youth Wellness Fund to support youth clients that lose coverage. It’s critical that clients do not lose access to care when they are in the middle of treatment, and that is especially true of youth, which is why we are starting the fund focused on that group. The youth mental health crisis has been well documented, and the Medicaid clients we serve have the most difficulty accessing high quality care.
• Embedded therapists: In CFAR’s Together Through Trauma program, we’ve piloted an embedded therapist model at Center for Employment Opportunities to bring individual therapy and group sessions directly to the returning citizens participating in the programming. There is a huge benefit to having a therapist embedded at the partner site- the therapist can better build trust with the participants, identify areas of emerging needs, and develop a deep understanding of the population. Under our Community Wellness Program, CFAR is seeking to replicate this pilot with partner organizations serving populations with a high need for mental health supports.