Black Lives Matter

As front line mental health providers, our focus in the past two weeks has been on the clients we serve and our community of clinicians. As a training center, we’ve been providing resources and helping our interns navigate the recent surge of feelings, both personally and with clients, spurred by the Black Lives Matter, anti-racism movement and the centuries of discrimination and oppression experienced by Black, Indigenous, and people of color. 

As Counselors, Marriage and Family Therapists, and Social Workers, we are aware of the mental, physical, and psychological impact of discrimination and racist behavior. We have an ethical duty outlined by our respective Code of Ethics to stand on the side of social justice. While that directive is clear to us as providers, we as an organization, want to be explicitly clear with our community:

We believe that Black Lives Matter, Black Trans Lives Matter, and support the great imperative to end racism and discrimination.

Since our founding, we have provided low-cost mental health counseling to anyone who wants it and we will continue to do so. We do not tolerate discriminatory behavior and do our best as a non-profit organization to provide education to our interns so that they can become multi-culturally competent clinicians.  In the days and weeks ahead, we will be addressing the experience our current BIPOC interns to get their input on how we can improve and better support them in their development. We will continue to support and encourage our White clinicians as they encounter their privilege, work to dismantle it, and hold them accountable for this critical piece. We will also continue to provide resources and supervision to all interns working with clients encountering their own privilege and racism. Lastly, we would like to invite any counseling student who has experienced feelings of invisibility or not-belonging to bring this to our attention and invite those who have experienced this elsewhere to join CAC. 

For the Black Lives Matter activists who are bravely speaking out, showing up, and keeping this movement going- we see you and we stand with you. For our fellow clinicians, continue doing the hard work of showing up for your clients to hold that space and that energy. That is our battlefield and we know you may be weary, but the world needs us now. Cry when you need to, reach out for comfort as you need it, but continue to be that safe harbor for our clients and community. We must keep the message that Black Lives Matter going for justice and change to take place and Capital Area Counseling vows to do so.