Scott County Community Foundation Awards Funds for Play Therapy

Centerstone is pleased to announce that the Scott County Community Foundation of Indiana has awarded our Child and Family Services Department a $3,500 grant to purchase five Mobile Play Therapy Kits for use in Scottsburg and surrounding communities.

Local community partners, including schools and other nonprofits, have voiced support for Centerstone’s work in the community and the expanded abilities that this grant creates. Centerstone and its partners recognize the current high level of demand for local mental health and substance abuse services, particularly in communities that have been hardest hit by the opioid epidemic, and have been working to join resources and expand availability in recent years to meet this need.

Scott County, like many other counties across the state and nation, has seen an increased number of children suffer the ill effects of abuse, neglect and family members’ substance abuse in recent years. Centerstone’s Child and Family Services Department works closely with the Department of Child Services, local school systems, and other community agencies to provide accessible, comprehensive counseling andtreatment services to all families across our footprint. Working with young children who have experienced abuse, neglect, family separation, exposure to substance abuse and trauma stemming from these situations is often challenging. Many children do not respond to traditional “talk therapy” as well as adults; for them, the most effective treatment is often play therapy, which allows children to “speak” through play when they are unable to verbally describe their thoughts, memories, and emotions. Mobile Play Therapy Kits allow staff who work with children and families to bring a variety of carefully curated therapeutic tools with them wherever they meet with clients, whether at schools, homes, parks, or elsewhere in the community. Therapists and family support specialists are trained to use play to help children reach their therapeutic goals and have seen our youngest clients open up in astounding ways through this intervention, building trust among family members and staff to allow the healing process to begin.

Centerstone staff in Scott Country are thrilled to have access to these new Mobile Play Therapy Kits, which will provide a greatly expanded toolkit for their work with local children and families. We know that working with the whole family is the best way to break the cycles of abuse and neglect in which too many of our friends and neighbors find themselves trapped. Centerstone is proud to partner with the Scott County Community Foundation to expand play therapy in Scott County and make this vital work more effective than ever.