Theme Joomla Pro Extensions

Since 2004, AFE has partnered with Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Diseases to provide IFI and CORE mental health services to the Child and Adolescent population.  These services include:

• Individual and Family Therapy - Our individual and family therapists utilize a variety of creative, innovative, and age-appropriate interventions to support children/adolescents and their families in meeting their treatment goals. Individual therapists provide one-on-one counseling with youth to identify and resolve any concerns they have in their personal, social, and academic lives. Family therapists work to improve family relationships, communication and functioning in order to promote strong and healthy family units.
• Community Support Services - Our community support staff work with consumers and their families to equip them with the skills necessary to achieve their treatment goals. They serve as the primary coordinators of services and provide linkages to community, psychiatric, addiction, medical, crisis prevention and intervention services as needed.
• Anger/Stress Management Group - Our anger management group serves youth who demonstrate challenges in managing their anger appropriately. This program provides youth with the coping skills necessary to manage their anger and with the tools express their feelings effectively.
• Substance Abuse Group - Our substance abuse group serves youth who have problems with substance use.  This program aims to educate youth about the effects of substance use and to assist them in creating realistic recovery plans and sober support systems. Random drugs screens are administered.
• Intensive Family Intervention (IFI) - IFI is short-term, intense,  risk-reduction program that serves youth who display elevated risk factors such as severe emotional disturbance, behavioral problems and/or substance abuse issues. This service is provided to the consumer and the family at a high frequency (typically 3 or more times each week) by a team of clinicians whose goal is to reduce at-risk behaviors at home, at school and in the community, improve family functioning, and support consumer in transitioning to a less intense level of care.
• Psychiatric Services
• Psychological Testing

Other Counseling Services:

AFE provides a host of other services for the general population needing counseling and other supportive services.  These services are provided within our office as well as various community settings. These services include:

• Individual & Family Therapy
• Marriage Therapy
• Court Ordered Supervised Visitation
• Life Coaching
• Drug Screening
• Assessments & Evaluations
• Adoption Home Evaluations
• Substance Abuse Assessments

Since 2003, AFE has partnered with the Department of Family and Children Services to provide family preservation and reunification services. The goal of our DFCS program is to prevent child abuse/neglect and to build healthy families. DFCS Services consist of:

• Drug Screening - AFE provides urine, oral, and hair follicle testing. AFE also provides alcohol testing.  Drug testing can be performed on-site in our office or within the community.
• Homestead Services - The goal of Homestead Services is to stabilize and help families in need of intensive therapeutic intervention to insure a safe and healthy environment for the family. Homestead Services provide short-term, intensive, crisis-oriented, in-home counseling program in order to stabilize the family and insure a safe and healthy environment for the children. This program attempts to meet the immediate /crisis-oriented needs of families while also beginning to address the root causes of family dysfunction with therapeutic intervention strategies. The Homestead program provides comprehensive assessment, family support, counseling, and crisis intervention to manage the risk factors contributing to child abuse and neglect. Homestead Services can be used for children at imminent risk of foster placement and reunification when a child is being returned to his/her family.
• Parenting/Parent Aide - The goal of the Parent Aide Program is to stabilize and help families in need of intervention by providing in-home and group parenting education. The Parent Aide Program engages paraprofessional staff to provide parenting education, training and support to families through group classes and in-home visitation. Parent Aides work as a team member with casework staff, with the goal of ensuring the safety and protection of children by improving parenting competency. Objectives are to strengthen the parent-child bond, reduce social isolation, build trust, help parents identify their children's needs and ways to respond to those needs, and appropriate discipline. Other responsibilities may include emergency respite care, food and nutrition education (i.e. meal planning, advice on grocery shopping, meal preparation, safe food handling and sanitation), information on homemaking and budgeting topics, and assistance in accessing community resources.
• Supervised Visitation Services - AFE provides supervised visitations between birth parents and their child(ren) while in foster care.  These visits are to ensure that parents continue their bond and to work towards their goal of reunification. AFE staff closely supervises the visit to ensure that children are being nurtured and that no signs of abuse/neglect are evident.
• Early Intervention Services - The goal of Early Intervention/Preventive Services is to provide voluntary family support services and information about community services to prevent problematic family issues from escalating to the point of required CPS intervention. Services include parenting, anger management, counseling, Early Intervention services are available for CPS referrals that are substantiated and closed with dispositions of low risk, referrals that are unsubstantiated and closed, referrals that are screened-out and open cases reassessed as low risk and subsequently closed.
• Comprehensive Child and Family Assessments - AFE is a certified Comprehensive Child and Family Assessment (CCFA) provider for the Department of Human Resources.  Our agency contracts with the State of Georgia to assure that every child initially entering the foster care system is assessed and receives appropriate services to ensure successful outcomes. A CCFA is a formal assessment initiated soon after a child enters the care of the Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS).  The assessment is completed within 30 days of the referral provide background information on the family and is geared towards developing a family plan with goals and recommendations for reunifying that child with their family.
• Wrap Around Services - Wrap-Around Services may be used in combination or as separate service components. The purpose of Wrap Around Services is to demonstrate improved outcomes in the safety, permanency and well-being of children and families. Wrap Around services are used to support children placed in the Department of Family and Children Services foster homes, children reunited with their birth families with court ordered services, and children placed with relative caregivers. These services include parenting, counseling, visitation between families, teaching life management skills, and other services.
• Other Assessments:

•  
  • Home Evaluations
  • Domestic Violence Assessments
  • Substance Abuse Assessments

Academy for Family Empowerment, Inc. (AFE) in collaboration with Rockdale County Public Schools STARS project is committed to providing all students access to school-based mental health services to ensure students succeed academically, behaviorally, emotionally and socially while strengthening families and schools.

AFE’s goal for the STARS project is to improve student’s emotional and social functioning by offering quality, counseling services.  Services provided through this program includes:

• Individual Therapy
• Family Therapy
• Group Therapy