Family Support

Family is everything at OhioGuidestone. Our definition of family doesn’t necessarily mean biological relatives, but can include caregivers, foster parents, mentors, educators, therapists, behavioral specialists, volunteers, and everyone involved in the health and well-being of those we serve and each other.

Our family mental health services center on individual needs within all stages of life. We know that one person’s mental health can affect the whole family. Family support services are for every family member, so each can feel like they are included, important, understood and supported.

OhioGuidestone’s family support programs start at the earliest stages of creating a family. Counseling for parents and children will help parents and guardians get the most out of their child parent relationship therapy.

Programs like Bright Beginnings start as early as pregnancy and run through kindergarten. Help Me Grow supports families who have a baby with special needs, FASD Services support children and families dealing with problems related to fetal alcohol syndrome. Foster Care Services and Parent Coaching are also among our many family support options.

The foundation of our family support services, and much of OhioGuidestone itself, is Counseling. Our Therapists, Behavioral Health Specialists, Social Workers, and Volunteers are the backbone of our community.

Family Counseling

While many of our therapists work one on one with clients, family counseling is beneficial in other situations. Family counseling can ease the transition when a child who has been removed from a home by court order or other circumstance is able to return home. The unification process can be difficult in cases of child abuse and neglect, especially for younger children who have been separated for a longer length of time. The same applies when it is the parent who returns home from treatment for substance abuse or from incarceration. OhioGuidestone’s family therapy services can make the difference between a repeat of the original circumstances and new healthy family dynamic.

Our family support services are backed by information that has been researched and tested by mental health experts and national organizations like the National Institute of Mental Health. Our parenting programs follow decades of mental health research, and the evidence-based Nurturing Parent model. In fact, OhioGuidestone is part of a nationwide network of therapists who are certified to teach the proven Nurturing Parent curriculum.

Our OhioGuidestone family counselors have been successful at treating families who have come to our attention through Social Services. In cases of child abuse and neglect, our Nurturing Parent teaching helps prevent future incidents, by teaching family members how to communicate more effectively and how to find joy and laughter in everyday life.

Family therapy and counseling services are essential for families dealing with grief and loss. Sometimes a perfectly healthy family dynamic is broken apart by the death of a loved one, especially an unexpected death, or the death of a young family member.

The family can never return to what it once was, but OhioGuidestone therapists can help family members accept and adapt to a new normal and the idea that they can again be happy and find joy in everyday living.

Many of us here at OhioGuidestone can speak from experience how the loss of a loved one has destroyed an otherwise joyful life. But we are here because we came through the grief and learned how sharing your grief can be a big step toward recovery and a path to finding a new normal that includes happiness, embracing the memories of a loved one’s life, rather than forever grieving their loss.

In March of 2022, the National Institute of Mental Health put a name on what OhioGuidestone family therapists had been seeing for years in some families. Sometimes after a loss, grief becomes part of the family dynamic, continuing long after a loved one has passed. Components like guilt and anger can compound the feeling of loss, and it gets in the way of recovery. The diagnosis is Prolonged Grief Disorder. The diagnosis opens opportunities for therapists to extend treatment when needed and acknowledges that grief has become a part of a person’s life or family.

OhioGuidestone’s family counseling can treat the individual for prolonged grief, and teach family members how to acknowledge, accept and respond to another family member’s grief.

An OhioGuidestone therapist can help a family in crisis regardless of the circumstances that put them there. We encourage all variations of families to reach out to us for help in creating or restoring mental health and well-being within the family.