A new program in the Grand Traverse area is looking for child therapists to donate their time to counsel kids struggling with mental or behavioral health.
The program is called Therapy Corps. United Way of Northwest Michigan will match volunteer therapists with kids who are uninsured, underinsured or Medicaid-eligible.
“We get a lot of outreach from families who have nowhere else to go, and so we're hoping that we can soon provide the service for them,” said Bailey Nuss, the regional community impact director at United Way.
The project is in early stages — United Way first needs therapists to volunteer. Sign ups are open on their website.
Nuss had to seek child therapy services herself. She drove all the way to Midland to meet with a specialist when her child was being diagnosed with autism.
She said many behavioral therapists are too expensive or too far.
"A lot of families can't take a day off of work to drive all the way down to Detroit to meet with someone," she said. "That's not realistic for a lot of people in our region."
The goal is to recruit licensed behavioral health specialists like social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists.
To attract those specialists, Nuss said United Way wants to offer continuing education stipends in exchange for their time. But she said it's still unclear how many of those stipends United Way can offer with its current budget.
Therapists would volunteer one hour per week to serve one family, Nuss said, "structured to hopefully help them through a tough period."
"Adding more onto [a therapist's] plate ... might be a difficult sell, but hopefully not an impossible one," she added.
Nuss said that since the pandemic, the number of kids facing mental and behavioral health challenges has grown and strained existing free services.
"These little people were raised during a time of a lot of uncertainty," Nuss said. "We didn't know if we could even go outside. We didn't know if we could meet with loved ones. And that's a lot for a young, developing mind."
She hopes this new program can help. United Way plans to offer both in-person and virtual therapy services, completely free of charge.
