Almaden Valley Counseling Service, Inc.

Counselor on Campus program includes on-site counseling at 37 public school campuses in 5 school districts and 2 private catholic schools at no cost to the students or their families. In 2017, we provided services to over 2,000 individuals from our school sites and provided more than 550 hours per week of onsite school counseling. We are focused on promoting personal growth, positive family relationships and emotional well-being for kids and families. This program teaches methods that help students learn and practice vital social skills, such as empathy, emotion management, problem solving and cooperation. Counselors also teach Skills for Social and Academic Success. The children’s social skills groups topics include: Bullying-both Targets and Perpetrators, Anger Management, Empathy, Impulse Control and Problem Solving, Cliques and Gossips, Making A Friend, Self-Esteem, Body and Self-Image and Bystander Power. These topics are presented and discussed at an age appropriate level.

Our Parent Education Program provides both Positive Parenting and Cooperative Parenting and Divorce classes for high risk families. AVCS provides Parenting and Cooperative-parenting Education for cases referred from Santa Clara and other local Family Court Services Programs. These classes and education are also a valuable resource to families in transitions and AVCS get many cases from individuals directly from access to our web site. We also know from over 25 years of providing family court approved parenting and co-parenting classes that strengthening the family unit by giving parents resources to improve the family system has the added benefit of improving our community as a whole by keeping parents out of court and keeping their children out of the middle of their conflicts. It appears the most significant presenting non-mental health issues in rank order relate to family and divorce relationships, self-esteem and anger management. There is some seasonality where family/divorce relationship issues cluster between January and April.