School-Based Counseling

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.