SCHOOL-BASED COUNSELING

About the Program

Youth Guidance meets youth where they are–physically in schools, socially and emotionally–to offer counseling support in 9 Chicago Public Schools, serving more than 279 youth in SY19. Staff address a student’s entire support system and facilitate positive change through individual, group, and/or family counseling.

Through advocacy and case management, they provide resources and linkages to services that ensure that students attend school regularly, move on to the next grade level, achieve academically, and graduate from school.

Youth Guidance interventions are designed to create meaningful change in all the areas of school life that affect social-emotional development.

Youth Guidance’s professionally-trained counselors help students discover and use their own resiliency to overcome barriers to school success and help schools create interventions that will produce the greatest change in the school culture and environment.

Responding to the requests of educators and school administrators, counselors address issues such as adjusting to a new school environment, improving behavior and interpersonal relations, coping with grief or loss, handling environmental trauma and stress (e.g., family, school, neighborhood) and regulating emotions.

Referral Form for Program Enrollment

Please complete this referral for a student to participate in a Youth Guidance Program. Completing this form does not guarantee the student will be enrolled in the program.

COUNSELING SERVICE VALUES

Youth Guidance interventions are designed to create real change in all the areas of school life that affect student social-emotional health and achievement.

We use developmental, strengths-based and systemic thinking to help schools identify areas that need support and interventions, targeting those that will produce the greatest change in the school environment.

Addressing the mental health needs of the school community
Setting goals and planning for the future
Being committed to culturally competent programming
Implementing and utilizing evidence based practices
Instilling hope and coping skills
Social-emotional learning
Following the National Association of Social Workers Code
Working from a systems perspective, including families, schools, and communities
Using a strengths-based perspective and fostering assets that clients already possess
Assuring that all clinical interventions consider the traumas that students have experienced

Referral Form for Program Enrollment

Please complete this referral for a student to participate in a Youth Guidance Program. Completing this form does not guarantee the student will be enrolled in the program.