Barrington Youth & Family Services offers a variety of youth outreach programs to help District 220 students develop their social and academic skills. Student participants are referred to programs by school counselors and teachers and can take advantage of the services at no (or minimal) cost. Some of these programs include the Peer Leadership Program, which focuses on bullying and has been conducted at St. Anne's, Countryside and Grove Ave. Elementary Schools, and Prairie Middle School, a Summer Soccer & Folkloric Dance Program which runs during the summer months and provides formal sports instruction and social-emotional learning activities for area youth, and also Pathways Mentoring Program that pairs middle school students with high-functioning BHS mentors in a structured setting to promote social and self-management skills development.
The Beyond Divorce support group for Dist 220 K-12th grade students and their parents is just finishing up it's winter session, and BYFS provides clinical outpatient counseling for children, teens, adults and families in both English and Spanish. Counseling is conducted in individual, couple or group-based sessions that often involve the entire family.
I have been a board member of Barrington Youth and Family Services for almost 10 years and during that time, I have seen a wonderful dedication of both staff and board members to help the youth and parents in our community who need services in mental health areas. Everyone has the best interests of our youth at the forefront of their endeavors. our organization fills a need in the community and I am proud to be a part of it.
As a local physician, I have become involved with Barrington Youth and Family Services to help it to "build healthier families" in our area. It offers counseling, prevention programs, and youth programs to a population that often does not have access to such services. My goal is to preserve the availability of these services and to maintain their quality.