Ed Wing's Blog

Saturday, March 29, 2008

What advice would you give a client you had to turn away?

I find myself in a strange and unfortunate position right now. The community mental health center I work for is losing a ton of its funding due to cutbacks at the state level. The bottom line is that we will no longer be able to offer individual therapy to clients who cannot afford to pay full price--around $90 per hour. This affects about 10 of my current clients, making our next session our last. Almost none of these clients are likely to be able to afford any alternative means to getting individual therapy and nearly all of them have significant mental health concerns that need attention in a big way. I have been scrambling to find a way to send these clients off in such a way that they can continue to be helped with their problems without me or another therapist to guide them. So far I have contacted a couple of publishers to request donations of some of the better self-help books (Feeling Good Handbook, Anxiety & Phobia Workbook, etc.), but now I'm trying to create a small packet of materials to send each of them off with at our last session. I find myself wanting to distill all the knowledge/opinion I have about how to take care of oneself, heal wounds, and grow--all with little material means (as the clients I must turn away are generally quite poor). I'd like to get some ideas for what the few readers of this blog (whether therapists or not) think I ought to include in my send-off package and/or whatever else I could do to help these clients who will no longer have access to individual therapy. Thanks. --Ed

1 Comments:

Blogger Blue Devil Knight said...

I don't have any good ideas, but man, I have to say what a crappy situation to be in, for you and your clients. They are lucky to have you with all this concern about what's gonna happen when they fly from the nest.

5:13 PM  

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