In this week’s edition of Meet Cortland County, X101’s Matt Brooks is joined by Mandy Stout, Deputy Executive Director at Family & Children’s Counseling Services and a licensed Clinical Social Worker. Mandy goes over the expanding services of the organization, including how they have become a Certified Community Behavioral Health Care Clinic.
Click here for audio transcript. Audio transcription is edited for content.
Matt Brooks: [00:00:00] Good morning. I’m Matt Brooks on X 1 0 1 Always Classic in for another edition of Meet Cortland County. And joining me this morning is Mandy Stout from Family and Children’s Counseling Services. Mandy is the Deputy Executive Director at Family and Children’s Counseling Services and a licensed clinical social worker.
Good morning, Mandy. Uh, how you doing this morning?
Mandy Stout: Hi. Good morning. I’m well. How are you?
Matt Brooks: Uh, doing well. Now before we get started, just so people don’t get confused, Lisa Herschel is the executive director and CEO of the agency. But Mandy, can you tell me about your role and what that involves?
Mandy Stout: Sure. So as the deputy director, I over.
See a lot of our clinical programming program expansion. Um, our organization has grown a bit over the years, so we have, uh, licensed clinics in both Binghamton and Oneida in addition to Cortland. So a lot of the clinical opportunities that we offer are programs that I oversee.
Matt Brooks: It’s great to hear that you’re growing and that means you’re expanding your services as well.
And that’s as part of a new certification that [00:01:00] this summer that. Can you let our listeners know what that means?
Mandy Stout: Sure. It’s, it’s been a year, so we have expanded services to become a certified community behavioral health clinic, which you’ll, um, hear us use the acronym C-C-B-H-C. And really what that means is that we’re focusing on the whole person is they access.
Services. So, um, if somebody comes into treatment, we have opportunities to link them to other services that may specialize, but we’re looking at the, the whole person and what their treatment needs are. Um, we offer a seamless transition across the full spectrum of healthcare services, including acute, chronic, and behavioral health needs.
Matt Brooks: Now, does this include crisis services? I know sometimes people may not seek out your services until things are at the tipping point.
Mandy Stout: Yes, absolutely. So one of the nine required services with A-C-C-B-H-C is crisis services. Our goal is not to duplicate any services that already exist in the county that we provide.
Care [00:02:00] to. So for example, mobile crisis through Liberty Resources will still exist in the county. We are working collaboratively with mobile crisis. Um, our goal is to really fill in gaps, so to look at, uh, crisis services that are needed outside of the hours that Liberty may provide. So, for example, we’re adding some daytime crisis.
Clinicians, uh, to be able to assist during daytime crises and additional mobile opportunities during those hours.
Matt Brooks: And, uh, it’s, we are heading around, uh, veterans Day as well, and I’ve heard that you’re having a coordinated care with, uh, the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Mandy Stout: We are. So Senator Webb is hosting a Veterans Resource Fair on November 13th from five to 7:00 PM right here at the Homer American Legion, and we’ll be there to share more information.
One of the nine required services of A-C-C-B-H-C, however is. To offer specialized services to veterans, so all of behavioral health needs. We have individuals who have [00:03:00] completed some evidence-based training to provide clinical services to our veterans, and we’re really excited. We have a couple of individuals on our clinical team who were in the military and have lived experience.
Matt Brooks: No, it’s amazing how, as you said, you’re filling in the gaps and. That’s what I mean a support system really needs to do. And you’re also not just talking about the individual person here, you’re also talking about a support system that, uh, could be centered around families as well, correct?
Mandy Stout: Yes, absolutely.
So our goal is to include the family members or direct supports to the individual as much as that individual is willing to have them involved. We really wanna focus on making positive change. And although we have people that are the identified clients at the agency in order for change to be sustainable support networks really need to be an active part of that.
So we know that there are better outcomes to achieve treatment goals when we help the individual and their support [00:04:00] systems or their families work on mental health, physical health, substance use, all of those needs within the family system.
Matt Brooks: Yeah, and I mean this is really just pushing the point that, I mean, there’s such a wide network of things you do to help individuals, help families, help the support systems of, of those people in need.
Can you tell me about some of the other things going on? Uh, some of the services at Family and Children’s Counseling provides.
Mandy Stout: So our prevention program does a lot of programming, a lot of evidence-based programming in the school systems. We have parenting classes. They participate in the hidden mischief program.
Um, they’re, they’re really reaching a lot of the youth in, in schools. Um, so a lot of exciting opportunities there. We have the L-G-B-T-Q Center always planning different social events, dropping, uh, hours for ongoing support. We have a number of peers that have joined our team. We’re really expanding peer services, so looking [00:05:00] to add additional, uh, peers with lived experience and substance use, mental health.
Also adding some youth peer advocates and family peer advocates. So peer services people with lived experience is something we really wanna encourage. For those that are accessing services from our agency, we continue with the basic substance use. Mental health services, and then we still have all of our school satellite clinics for mental health services to youth in the school if they’re unable to or if it’s more convenient for the child or the family to access services.
Right at the school
Matt Brooks: with me is Mandy Stout, deputy Executive Director at. Family and children’s counseling and a licensed clinical social worker. Mandy, we are unfortunately running a little bit out of time, but before we head outta the studio today, uh, you have a lot of services under one roof. We’ve talked about veterans, we’ve the school satellite clinics and families, individuals.
If people want more information about all the services you provide, maybe they want to inquire about [00:06:00] utilizing one of the services. How should people go about that?
Mandy Stout: You can always call. We have great front desk staff. They’re well versed in, in being able to share all of the resources we have available.
We also have a website, www.family cs.org.
Matt Brooks: All right. Well, thank you Mandy for joining me this morning on another edition of Meet Cortland County.
Mandy Stout: Thank you for the opportunity. Thanks for having us. And we just wanna reinforce that there’s no wrong door into accessing services.
Matt Brooks: Oh no. Wrong door. Indeed.
Thank you for joining me again, and this is Matt Brooks on X 1 0 1. Always classic for another edition of Meet Cortland County.