After seven months of operation and more than a 30% growth rate since late November, the Wraparound Center operating at the future Waukegan Community Unit School District 60 administration building on Washington Street is adding a third social service provider.
GRO Community began working with students at two district middle schools in the fall providing mental health services for boys and men. It will join A Safe Place and the Community Youth Network (CYN) as service providers at the Wraparound Center. They are ready to start.
Bridget Dotson, the Wraparound Center’s director, said GRO provides an additional dimension to the sexual abuse and domestic violence counseling provided by A Safe Place, and general mental health as well as substance abuse therapy coming from CYN. Participants are waiting.
“GRO is already in some of our middle schools, so that connection is made,” Dotson said. “We have students waiting for the approval tonight to refer them to GRO. We utilize our outreach. They have their system already in place.”
The District 60 Board of Education unanimously approved GRO’s entry to the Wraparound Center Tuesday at the Lincoln Center administration building in Waukegan, giving it the opportunity to expand its services beyond its two-middle-school base.
Dotson said GRO fills a special niche in the community which it demonstrated working initially with students at Robert Abbott Middle School in the fall, and then with youngsters at Edith Smith Middle School as well.
“Their specialty is developing boys into men,” Dotson said. “They are already known in the community, and they will enable us to enlarge the scope of our work in the community and the scope of the Wraparound Center.”
Already operating in Ohio, Michigan and Texas, as well as Illinois, Rashaud Media, GRO’s regional director for Illinois, said Waukegan is one of five locations in the state. The others are Rockford, Peoria, Carbondale and Cairo.
“Our focus is molding boys into men,” Media said. “We work primarily with Black and Brown men, as well as men as a whole. We take a holistic approach. We go to basketball games. We just took them to a Bulls game. We held a job fair.”
Jaimon Barconia, a therapist working for GRO in Waukegan, said the organization generally helps boys and men from “low socioeconomic communities that are struggling with behavioral issues or the criminal justice system.” Different approaches are used.
“Therapy doesn’t have to be conducted in an office,” Barconia said. “Therapy can be conducted in a park. Therapy can be conducted in a nature preserve. We can walk around and participate in community support intervention.”
Barconia, along with District 60 board members Carolina Fabian and Christine Lensing, all said breaking through the stigma attached to mental health treatment is important for the well-being of the community. Barconia said the makeup of GRO’s Waukegan therapists helps remove barriers.
“The participants are responsive to our services,” Barconia said. : That is important because therapy has a stigma. Therapy has a taboo. We’re able to break those stigmas, break those barriers, by them seeing someone who looks like them.”
Lensing said she is hopeful the GRO approach will appeal to all students the way it has at the two middle schools. She believes the approach the organization uses will help remove the stigma attached to mental health treatment.
“With this vibe and this approach, hopefully that resonates with our community and they actually begin to seek out your resources because there is a huge stigma and we’re trying to break past that,” Lensing said.
Fabian agreed there is a stigma attached to mental health treatment, but she said as people started to deal with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, they realized the need to confront feelings and emotions was more widespread.
“There is a stigma,” Fabian said. “I think with COVID it highlighted everyone needed some mental wellness in their life and were more mindful. One highlight of going through the pandemic is we’re able to see more therapeutic services and highlighting that need.”
From the time the Wraparound Center opened over the summer until late November, Dotson said it helped 54 participants. As the middle of February approaches, the number has reached the low 80s.
“This is great,” Dotson said. “The community is becoming more informed and, as they do, I believe our numbers will continue to grow. The majority of people we see are students, but we do see some adults in the community.”
