Causes: Hot Lines & Crisis Intervention, Human Services, Mental Health, Substance Abuse Dependency, Prevention & Treatment, Substance Abuse Treatment

Mission: Our mission is to provide a comprehensive array of crisis, behavioral health, trauma and recovery services that contribute to the well-being of the southern maryland community. Pursuit of this mission has led to ongoing partnerships with local and regional public and private system partners in the social and human services, criminal justice, and healthcare fields. Walden exists to responsively meet community needs, and we strive to provide high quality, compassionate services and leadership to southern maryland in the areas of crisis intervention, trauma-informed care, and integrated behavioral health.

Programs: Walden is a nonprofit behavioral health agency that has been serving southern maryland since 1973. Walden's services are made available to individuals and families qualifying for grant-funded services, medicaid, private or self-pay options, with an emphasis on working with clients to make our services accessible to all persons in need, including underserved persons who are perhaps the group most in need of our services. Our outpatient services are delivered at four walden facilities or via co-location with community partners. Maintaining multiple service access points has increased our ability to create access for underserved persons, particularly those living in poverty, to our services. Walden provides outpatient services to meet an array of behavioral health and wellness needs. Outpatient substance abuse services at walden are carf accredited and range from assessment, substance abuse education, general outpatient, and intensive outpatient group and individualized services. Family education and continuing care are also important components within our substance abuse service continuum. During our most recently completed program and fiscal year, walden provided outpatient substance abuse treatment services to over 2,175 adults and adolescents. Walden has built a successful outpatient mental health therapy and psychiatric services program with clinics in charlotte hall, lexington park, and waldorf. In fiscal year 2014, over 1,200 consumers accessed services in the clinic. Walden also provides crisis intervention and mental health/trauma services to victims of trauma and abuse; this set of outpatient services is offered to individuals in need without regard to the victim's ability to pay for such services. Within this scope, walden provides a range of services to child, adolescent and adult victims of domestic violence, relationship or dating violence, sexual assault, rape, and child abuse. Services are also extended to non-offending family members. Core victims services provided include hotline, crisis, advocacy, victim outreach, and therapeutic counseling services. We have a strong collaboration with our local law enforcement partners to offer lethality assessment program services, utilizing the 24-hour accessibility available via our hotline service to trained crisis workers, outreach, and on-call professional staff who can enter a dialogue with domestic violence victims and set safety planning, emergency assistance, and follow-up services in place while the police are still on the scene with the victim. In all, walden provided crisis and mental health/trauma services to nearly 800 victims of crisis, domestic violence, sexual assault, rape, dating violence, stalking, and child abuse in our most recently completed year. In a project designed to create greater access to behavioral health services, the lexington park health enterprise zone, walden has developed a partnership with medical care providers. The project integrates a behavioral health interventionist into our local hospital and outpatient clinic for uninsured/underinsured persons. This integrated care project provides services to over 600 people monthly. We also added a project that provides peer support and non-clinical interventions via recovery community centers. Beacon of hope recovery community center for adults has been operational since february 2012; the cove/dfz opened in january 2013, providing peer support for youths. The two programs serve an average of 300 guests monthly via structured, drop in, recovery coaching, special events and hosting activities.

our residential services are utilized by individuals throughout the southern maryland region. Walden's residential programs seek to provide recovery supportive treatment options to adults, complemented by family education and support as well as alumni activities. Anchor treatment center is a carf accredited facility offering short and long-term lengths of stay and featuring medically monitored detoxification and co-occurring capable residential treatment services. In our most recently completed fiscal and program year, walden served 568 individuals at our anchor treatment center. Residential services also include specialized half-way house programming at the compass program for men and a north star half-way house program for unaccompanied women or men. In all of our residential service components, we are seeing a significant increase in young adults with opiate addiction in need of our services. An agency leader walden's entire continuum of services is widely regarded as a leader in the state in the implementation of recovery oriented system of care (rosc) programming and activities. In the most recently completed fiscal year, walden successfully took a local leadership role in the integration of trauma-informed care for our local rosc system; the creation of recovery support services; and in expanding access to psychiatric care to our clients, including through the use of tele-psychiatry, on-site psychiatric services; and ultimately achieving qualification as a community mental health clinic in fy 13. Current goals include expanding our integration activities with primary care and hospital-based providers and implementing evidence-based practices in a manner that enhances our core practices (cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing) and expands staff knowledge into new clinical practices such as seven challenges for adolescents and craft (community reinforcement and family training).