Mentoring for Independent Living Skills

Our mentors engage in meaningful, therapeutic relationships that support clients to manifest their goals towards independence. Our mentors collaborate with psychotherapists in the community when once or twice a week therapy may not be enough to realize the practical, logistical changes needed. Mentors assist people to follow through with their personal, academic and vocational interests. We often work with adolescents, young adults, and adults who want to engage in self-care, job searching, and course work, but who may find it hard to feel motivated to get going on these parts of their lives. We also work with young people who struggle socially to help them become better connected with the community. We often assist adolescents and young adults in high school or college to strategize effective ways to work with executive functioning difficulties.
Mentors offer community support services that ground the therapeutic goals and provide an organized approach to day to day living skills. These services include: collaborating with therapists both on our team and in the community, budgeting, exercise, yoga, meditation, organizing, cleaning, schedule management, academic support, and crisis support. Mentors offer an important perspective to the clinical treatment. Through working day to day with clients, they have a clear understanding of the actual skills that clients might need to put their goals into action.

Daily Living Support:

Our mentors offer support for clients to help them organize daily living tasks. Mentors collaborate with clients to help them grocery shop, budget, clean their apartments/rooms, and organize any logistical details that are difficult for them.

Academic Support:

Our academic support includes working in alliance with clients to ensure that they are on track to meet their academic goals. We can attend meetings at school with counselors, create bridges with disability services and interventionists, and create plans that help students schedule their time effectively and engage in the tutoring support that is needed to stay on top of school work. Parents often appreciate the mentor’s role in tracking academic progress as it removes them from difficult power struggles over grades, homework, and use of school supports.

Health and Wellness:

Therapy is most effective when balanced with skills and habits that support healthy living. We offer support with grocery shopping, meal planning, and nutritional awareness. Our mentors attend yoga classes and go hiking with clients. We take clients to the gym, and practice mindfulness exercises and meditation with them. We work collaboratively with clients to create the kinds of exercise and mindfulness programs that work best for them. We know that both exercise and mindfulness are integral parts of a wellness plan and we work to integrate these skills into the daily lives of clients.

Sober Support Coaching/Mindful Substance Use Skills:

We work with clients to decide the best approach to substance use for them and their families. If clients and families support a sober living program, we help clients with integrating the 12 steps, mindfulness based relapse prevention and dialectical behavior therapy skills training programs into their daily living skills. We also support families with setting up alcohol and drug monitoring programs through local agencies.