This initiative was conceived in April 2021 from the gathering of community members from the 75217 zip code, known locally as Pleasant Grove, to understand a common interest in improving the public health of their community. During this process, we learned that community members had long desired a mental health center for their children and teens. Those that participated in the focus groups mentioned feeling helpless when it came to knowing how to best help their children’s mental health needs. However, in giving them the space to speak and think, these same parents came up with a truly innovative idea for a mental health center. They agreed that the center should not only provide counseling services, but also educational support, emotional support, and a network of resources for them as parents to feel equipped in helping their children.
Therefore, Community Does It has made the dreams of families in Pleasant Grove a reality: the very first center for mental health services in the 75217 zip code! The first service offered at the center is connecting families to other resources available for them through other organizations in the Dallas area. When children receive a diagnosis, all too often their parents are not connected with the resources that could help them. Our goal is that no family who has visited our clinic ever says, “I didn’t know about that.” The second service we offer is family support through education and emotional support, free of cost to families. What families asked about the most during the focus groups was for us to teach them strategies to support what was gained in therapy sessions and to increase the chances of their children succeeding through their mental health challenges by creating a supportive environment at home. Thus, we have created a validated curriculum to give the parents those tools and strategies to support their children and fight the stigma within their own families and smaller communities so their children can receive the full scope of the support they need. The third layer of services is counseling therapy for children and youth ages 4-18 and their families at the low cost of $25 per session. Although we have grown our counseling department, we still an extensive waiting list for counseling therapy before even formally marketing this service! Therefore, we cannot fully meet the high demand for our services without your help! Your financial contributions are crucial in keeping counseling therapy both accessible and affordable for our community families. Asking $25 per session covers only 7% of our operations, and the true cost of a session is $120. Therefore, in order to stay true to our mission of giving equitable access to routine mental health services to the members of this community that has asked for them, we need the generous contributions of people like you! Scroll to our "Programs" section to learn more about what we do at Community Does It!