RVCC’s School-Based Services to be honored at ABH Salute to Excellence

River Valley Counseling Center’s School-Based Services team has been selected by the Association for Behavioral Healthcare (ABH) to receive the Excellence in Program Leadership Award. This award will be presented at ABH’s Salute to Excellence on Friday, October 30th in Burlington, MA.

“We know that our School-Based team rocks,” said Dr. Elaine Campbell, Senior Vice President of Clinical Services for ServiceNet, “and that it has an amazingly creative and dedicated team of leaders. It’s so great to see them recognized, and to share the impact of their work with other behavioral health organizations across Massachusetts.”

RVCC provides School-Based services in 12 school districts across Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin counties, at 75 schools, with 100+ child and adolescent-focused therapists seeing more than 2,500 students each year.

All the program leaders have been full-time school clinicians themselves, so they know the work firsthand. And in addition to providing clinical supervision and mentoring, they keep communications flowing with more than 200 referral sources/collaborators who all work together to make school-based mental health care possible.

A big part of this leadership team’s success is the time and care they put into their relationships with each other. ” Their in-person staff meetings offer that incredible combination of a place to receive vital information and resources, while having so much fun, you almost forget you’re at work,” said Mareike Every-Giroux, VP of Clinical Care & Substance Use Treatment. “As professionals who specialize in working with young people, they know that engaging in play to plan and problem-solve is often the best way to stir creativity and get everyone on board with the outcome.”

So, hats off to School-Based Services for the many ways they embody excellence in program leadership! Leadership team members: Alexa Mignano, Catherine Vaughan, Jasmin Fernandez, Emma Roderick, Lisa Smith O’Connor, Jude Almeida-Merrell, Emma Cohen, Xochitl Calero, Elizabeth Adams, Jannah Taylor, Amanda Mercado, and Bonnie Branch.

Pictured top left to right: Emma Roderick, Jude Almeida-Merrell, Amanda Mercado, Xochitl Calero,  Catherine Vaughan, Lisa Smith O’Connor, Alexa Mignano 

Bottom left to right: Emma Cohen, Elizabeth Adams, Jasmin Fernandez, Bonnie Branch, Jannah Taylor