This week the entire Lakeside staff returns to begin preparations for the 2023-24 school year. We are concluding many of our summer projects and moving towards another busy and impactful year. In that light, I thought it would be good to remind our readers of all the services Lakeside provides to over 5,000 students and thousands of professionals that we train in trauma-informed care.
Our 4 Schools
Lakeside sponsors 4 different schools in Montgomery County: Lakeside School, Lakeside Girls Academy, the Souderton Vantage Academy, and the Upper Merion Vantage Academy. In each of these schools we provide educational, clinical, and behavior management services to students who are regionally referred to us in order to help them find new ways to cope with their adversities while attempting to stay on course in their academic progress.
In-School Counseling
The COVID pandemic placed our area school districts in a difficult space because of the hundreds of students who had mental health and related needs as a result of the pandemic. The districts knew that we specialize in helping students who have relational, emotional, and behavioral struggles.
When grant funding became available, they contacted us for additional counseling that would place our counselors within their school buildings. That grew our In-School Counseling Program from 40 staff to 115 staff currently. This number continues to grow. We provide trained counselors to over 35 school districts serving thousands of students in order to keep them regulated, stable, and moving ahead with their academic and personal goals.
Mobile Support Program
For students who are unable to attend school, we offer tutoring and counseling to help them continue their life goals. These are students who traditionally would be falling through the cracks of our systems. This program gives them the opportunity to continue their trajectory of academic and personal growth in order to graduate or get their GED through the work of our caring staff.
Neurologic
This is a program within our training systems that helps teachers and administrators provide brain-based and trauma-informed environments for their students. This program replicates what we do with our students to other school environments, providing neurological training and strategies for brain regulation.
This program empowers students to take responsibility for their own behavior through strategies that keep them calm and allow them to be more cognitive. Further, we provide staff to schools who assist their staff with this training and its implementation in their school environment.
Lakeside Global Institute
This is a comprehensive trauma-informed training system that offers a series of workshops and a full trauma competent professional certification for professionals who deal with trauma-impacted individuals. We are using this program to contextualize trauma-informed and responsive training to thousands of individuals both synchronously and asynchronously.
We have been providing training to our systems such as the Pennsylvania Office of Children and Youth who are managing the entire child protective system. There is nowhere in our country where there is this level of well-researched and processed training for professionals.
The Creating PRESENCE Model
This is a program that Lakeside manages for Dr. Sandra Bloom, the author and owner of the program. It is a comprehensive program that trains and certifies entire organizations to be trauma-informed and trauma-responsive. Currently we are working with over 30 organizations to help them align their practices and policies to be trauma responsible.
There is much more to say about our mission and programs, but this is the core of what Lakeside is attempting to achieve in making our world more trauma-sensitive, trauma-informed, and trauma-responsive. It’s a huge task with outreach to thousands of students and adults.
We feel very privileged and humbled by our impact with an understanding that we are continuing to grow and develop our work to be contextualized to the needs of our society. This is what we celebrate as we continue to move forward in the 2023-2024 school year.
