DONORS & SPONSORS
HISTORY
The Empowering Counseling Program was started by Dr. Tyson McCrea and Angel Pringle, MSW in 2006 through a partnership between community residents, social service providers, and schools in Bronzeville, with Loyola University of Chicago School of Social Work. Led by Principal Investigator Dr. Tyson McCrea, a clinical social worker, teacher, and researcher with over 30 years of experience with children and disadvantaged youth, and founding directors Jeffrey Bulanda, Ph.D. and Deanna Guthrie, Ph.D., LCSW, the program has offered free school-based counseling and after school services in Bronzeville, Woodlawn, and Englewood. Social work interns were placed in preschool to grade 12 schools in Southside communities, depending on students’ interests. Students were provided counseling and advocacy services inside the school. They were also instructors and counselors for youth in our Stand Up! Help Out! (SUHO) program. Steady improvement of our programs based on client feedback has resulted in 99% attendance rates for children and youth in the counseling program, and 99% attendance rates for youth in our SUHO after school program.
Thanks to our funders, since the program was established, it has served over 700 youth between ages 4 - 21 and trained over 48 BSW, MSW, and Ph.D. social work students to be skilled clinicians. The ECP also conducts individual to family counseling based on a street-based social work framework. Since 2014 the ECP has partnered with Professor Maryse Richards’ Risk and Resilience Lab, carrying out cross-age mentoring in Chicago’s high-poverty, high-crime communities.
ABOUT ECP
The Empowering Counseling Program creates partnerships with schools, residents, churches, and social service providers throughout Chicagoland to provide school-based clinical social work services to disadvantaged youth who might not otherwise receive counseling or support. Through the program, youth are encouraged to develop leadership skills, coping mechanisms and become strong members of their community beginning at a young age.
Counseling services of the ECP are designed and implemented through a street-based social work framework. This model was formed through a combination of the strength-based perspective, self-determination and trauma theories while intersecting psychodynamic, ecological, and cultural contexts.
Street based social work decolonizes the traditional view and role of the therapeutic relationship by not hindering opportunities to know youth and individuals in a non-clinical setting. Working alliances form based on how services are participatory and responsive to the youth and individuals needs. In other words, services need to happen when and where the client can participate.
Research about program services is based on a community-based participatory action, studying both effective service models and topics youth identify as important, such as sustaining their hope and developing their compassion. Youth and students evaluate their programs as interviewers and as analysts of program evaluation data. They also participate as co-authors in ongoing academic research projects.
Once the poor can unleash their energy and creativity, poverty will disappear very quickly.
Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Prize Lecture, 2006
MISSION
The Empowering Counseling Program aims to maximize the creativity and leadership skills of our social work students and clientele. We strive to uphold solidarity with our clients in order to respond creatively to the formidable problems of poverty, racial discrimination, community violence, educational disadvantage, and social exclusion.
GOALS
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Provide the highest quality mental health services for youth in Chicago's South Side communities
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Unite with communities against poverty, discrimination, stigma, and social exclusion to allow everyone to receive the care they deserve
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Partner with schools and community agencies to be accessible to youth in various settings
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Provide services as needed to groups and individuals
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Train BSW, MSW, and Ph.D. students to be empowering clinicians
To accomplish our goals, ECP provides intensive supervisory support for social work interns and enlists the child and youth clients as well as the interns in ongoing evaluation and input into the structure and services of the program.