RIVER CITY ADVOCACY INC

River City Advocacy works to address disparities in mental health care in our community through collaborative and innovative methods that improve mental health and wellness, personal autonomy and independence, and access to care. We want to create a compassionate and caring community that embraces mental health and well-being.

One of the strategies for growth and financial diversification is increasing our grant applications as well as continuing to charge our sliding scale fees for counseling services. Our sliding scale fees are for the counseling program only. We do not have plans to charge for peer support, however we are investigating the potential to bill Medicaid/Insurance for support groups. We are working on becoming an approved vendor for state agencies and Medicaid in order to bill for our services which will help us with growth and diversification. We have begun to charge for Anger Management workshops that are part of a court order for individuals/families, and this opens the door to future opportunities for funding.

We have three LPC-I on staff as well as an LMFTA to provide services, a certified Peer Support Specialist, and all of our staff are certified in Mental Health First Aid who are able to provide services under the River City Advocacy umbrella. In addition to our paid staff, we also have volunteers who teach art classes and help the staff provide peer support.

Over the last two years we have had tremendous growth in our programs. We have 14 groups offered each week as well as individual, couples, and family counseling offered into the evening hours four nights per week. River City Advocacy has shown steady progress toward our goals of growth and increasing services. We have created MOUs with organizations that help us expand our reach in the community and stretch the funding dollars to serve more than just our traditional consumers.