Lutheran Community Services Northwest Programs
Lutheran Community Services Northwest responds to the emerging needs of communities through diverse programs in Western Washington.
Family Support Programs
Our Family Support Centers are located in communities throughout the North Puget Sound region, and have a unique approach to working with individuals, families and communities. Family Centers: build upon strengths and capacities, serve as a hub for the community, work for positive social change, and offer help in a non-threatening environment. Our Family Support Centers provide critical resources and services to families and individuals in their local communities with a focus on strengthening connections and building support networks.
Refugees Mental Health Services
International Counseling and Community Services (ICCS) and the Pathways to Wellness project have a shared goal for each refugee to be a successful, thriving, and contributing member of their new community, bringing their faith, resilience, and customs to enrich the tapestry of our nation.
- ICCS is a licensed mental health agency that primarily serves refugee individuals, youth and families. LCS current clients come from a wide range of countries including Ukraine, Moldova, Burma, Bhutan, Iraq, Congo, Somalia, Eritrea and more.
- Pathways to Wellness: Integrating Refugee Health and Well-being project was developed to create early identification and treatment for emotionally distressed refugees. Pathways provides outreach to refugee communities around mental health issues common to trauma and adjustment, and building the capacity of other mental health providers to work with refugee populations by offering ongoing training and consultation.
Foster Care and Adoption
LCSNW offers three foster programs with the goal to safe and stable homes for neglected and abused children.
- Families for Kids is a foster parent recruitment and retention program that reaches out and supports current and potential foster and adoptive parents.
- Permanency Planning Foster Care works to reunify children with their birth families while providing loving and stable foster homes for children with the goal of their foster home remaining a permanent, adoptive home in the event that our reunification efforts with birth families are unsuccessful.
- Refugee and Immigrant Children's Program serves refugee and immigrant children from around the world who come to the U.S. without families. We place children in culturally matched homes and/or provide culturally competent support to foster parents who care for these children.
Recent Successes and Current Challenges
Successes
This past year has brought many successes and opportunities to the programs of LCSNW:
Pathways to Wellness:
- The City of Seattle Human Services Coalition honored the LCS Pathways to Wellness project with an Innovation Program Award. Pathways to Wellness was recognized as an innovative collaboration project with the purpose of providing mental health screening, referral, community outreach and education services to refugees to aid in their overall emotional well-being during resettlement.
Family Support Centers:
- Family Support Centers’ Back to School Resource Fairs leveraged supplies and resources from local communities for nearly 4,000 children to help start their school year with success and equality
- The Healthy Families Project was launched in 2011 and interweaves three critical areas of programming, financial health, physical health, and family health; leading to stronger families and communities.
Children's Services Foster Care Programs
- LCS continues to expand independent living services to refugee and immigrant foster youth.
- LCS is developing a new mentor/volunteer initiative to provide support to refugee and immigrant foster youth.
Challenges
As our economy slowly recovers, LCSNW is providing new resources to individuals and families in our community each day. As a result of the increasing need in our community, we are expanding services to include financial literacy, job search and basic needs assistance or information and referral.
At the same time LCSNW programs are challenged by the decrease in public funding for contracted services. In this context, we continue to seek
- Funding to build operational infrastructure and ongoing financial sustainability
- Volunteers to provide ongoing support to programs
- Foster parents to provide a permanent or respite for a child in need.