Special Interview with Lynn Keune, L.M.F.

T, Clinical Director of LaFamilia Counseling Center

Interviewer: Your mission statement states that you Son said, I dont care; and Dad stayed. He became honest, he had to cry, it became real. He said, There has never been anyone to help work in collaborative partnerships. Please explain what type of collaborative specific to mental health? us. It was pretty awesome to be able to [do] that; even if I only had Response: Recently our collaborators have been very focused along with the mental health services in trying to reach out to diverse cultures in the community. They asked us to conduct a focus group for Latinos (speaking Spanish only) to ask them what were their needs concerning suicide prevention, and so we hoped to do that focus group for them, and then we gave that information to them because as you know people that dont speak the language are fearful to go to larger groups. And so we approached them. As we said, the reason they are not [going is] because they resist large groups. We have had a program in the past, and the program was to learn about what works. And we found out that if we have little groups in the gym they will come. And it isnt because they dont know, they know and they want to participate because they have information, but they are fearful to go to big groups, thinking they wont understand. So we have had groups with the Spanish-speaking, with Hmong-speaking. Those are the two main ones but certainly when we had the Oasis Program we had seven different capabilities of identifying these different groups that we could work with. African American was one, LGBT was one. [There were] many different ones we could really focus [on] and find out from them what were their needs. that one person it was great. And in conjunction with my mental health groups we work with the Family Resource Center here. They offer parenting groups, in Spanish and in Hmong, and different core groups under BFRC offer a variety of services. The center is not just exclusive to mental health; we refer our mental health [clients] to our whole program. We actually have a group of parents that contribute to all the various different programs. They meet as an advisory committee, and they meet monthly.

Interviewer: In what ways do you reduce isolation and hopelessness? Response: Ill tell you what, for 39, 40 years, however long weve
been in business, the original philosophy did not fit all cases. We found out that we need to find out from the families what they need and, most of all, go into the communities. If I take you on a tour here youre not going to see an office with a couch. We do in-home, school support services; we reach out to them rather than making them come to us. That is what we have done the entire time we have had La Familia. We like to become allies with that family, and we provide case management services to help them to connect with the community resources. There may be a special group within the community that can help them so that it will get them out of that isolation.

Interviewer: That sounds great. How do you help people access their strengths and build on positives?

Interviewer: How do you empower individuals? Response: Sometimes it is hard because they sometimes have hit

the end of their rope and they dont know what to do. We always like to start from their strengths, and so we identify what strengths they Response: We believe in the same philosophy as the Mental have had in the past and then we start to build on those. We find that little by little as we build on those strengths we can help them recogHealth Department or Behavior Health Services in providing family-driven services, and family-driven services really mean nize them. That is what really works the very best. that we need to hear the voice of the family and what is it that Interviewer: I read something interesting about individuthey need. What is it from their perspective, not from us as als having an opportunity to become stakeholders. How experts; they are the experts in their family. They know what does this work? has worked in the past and we need to help them use those [methods], and maybe they have lost it somewhere; we can Response: The stakeholders are actually the public. Theyre the help find it again because the whole purpose is for us to get ones who will come to our work groups when we are doing focus fired. We are not there to step in and run their lives, so we groups to identify what it is in the community that is needed. Somewant to hear from them and find out what has worked. Maybe times it is providing outreach to many different diverse areas here. if there are some community services that they havent been Parents are stakeholders as well because we invite them to be inable to utilize, to maybe bring them in to help them to voice volved with the parents advisory committee and any families involved what it is they need. in mental health programs here are encouraged to participate in that group. Interviewer: What are some of the groups that you

have for non-English speaking people that you have Interviewer: Do you have an employment center here? How do not already mentioned? you motivate people with mental health challenges to transition
Response: The mental health department itself. I am an art therapist myself, one of the many hats that I wear. As an art therapist I know that I can work with many different languages because art therapy is a universal language, and you can go right past that expressive language of the verbal into the expressive language of the heart, so we have groups in Spanish here or Hmong, I mean they come in whenever they need it. I just did a grievement group, and there was a Spanishspeaking dad and he never received grievement service in Sacramento because there was nothing available. Even though my group is for kids, I invited him. Dad was just kind of standing around, and I asked, Would you like to stay? And he said he didnt think his son would want him to, so I asked the son, What would you think if Dad stayed? into wanting to have gainful employment?

Response: We do have a One-Stop Career Center here at our family resource center. We do have families that come through here, first of all looking for a job, and we find that many of them do have challenges that they are dealing with, and one of them may be a mental health issue. If we really get a sense that that is something that affects their ability to find employment, then we work with them to be able to at least help evaluate that this is the case and that there are additional resources that can help them. We really encourage them to connect with some community resources to address those challenges. Many times they are not going to accept that, so it may take several times of them coming back. I think they kind of get a sense that once they are looking for a job and they go for

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