Overview | Therepeutic & Eductional Services

Counseling

BETA Center provides therapeutic intervention in individual, group and family counseling sessions provided by Masters level counselors. Decreasing the stress of these fragile women is the first step. Our residents suffer from fear, guilt, low self-esteem and hopelessness. These issues, often accompanied by a history of abuse, must be resolved before these women can get their life back on track and, for those who choose to parent, to successfully bond with her child. By helping these mostly young women resolve past emotional damage, BETA's Residential Program gives them an opportunity for success that they have never experienced before.

Through counseling these women are able to identify goals for their future. When appropriate, counselors help residents work on reunification with their families. To support the transition to self-sufficiency, residents have access to counselors even after they complete the program.

Life Skills & Enrichment

Learning how to manage daily life and developing a life-plan is critical to these young women's success when they leave our program. We help clients access community resources for food assistance and medical care. Case managers support the residents' ongoing participation in prenatal medical care.

After these urgent needs are met, BETA Center works with our clients to help them develop goals. Together, we work on building interpersonal skills and the other tools needed to achieve their goals. Case managers provide the much needed support for resident's daily challenges. Program participants are required to attend BETA's onsite alternative school or G.E.D. program. For those who have received their High School diploma, they are offered advanced educational or vocational opportunities.

Personal Enrichment activities build the self-esteem and life-skills that are key to the overall success of these young women. Counseling Sessions are augmented by a creative arts curriculum that effectively resolves the client's resistance through safe, positive experiences of expression. Through drawing, crafts, photography and other visual arts, music and dance these young women are finding a vehicle to express their feelings.

Parenting

Teen pregnancies are high risk for premature delivery, low birth weight and developmental delays. Prenatal Education and Attachment builds the skills for teens and women who have experienced neglect or abuse to form a nurturing attachment to their baby during pregnancy. This attachment is critical whether or not a woman chooses to parent or place her child for adoption. AT BETA we teach women how to take care of themselves, including how to eat right, maintain prenatal care and build a relationship with their unborn child. Lamaze instructors prepare these young women for childbirth. With these efforts, our clients are delivering full term babies with normal birth weights, giving their children a better start.

Residents learn about the ages and stages of a child's development. Pregnant residents are given the opportunity to have real life experience with the infants in our onsite childcare center. We provide parenting education in both the group setting and one-on-one. Parent/Child Lab is an experiential session in a playroom setting for mothers and their babies to promote parent/child attachment, teach positive parenting skills and provide one-on-one support to new mothers.