The mental health service provider that took over operations at the former Peninsula Counseling Center in March is looking to expand the center’s reach and its impact in Nassau County, according to the facility’s new management.
“We want to keep the community’s needs addressed, because if it were closed, it would be disastrous,” said Herrick Lipton, CEO of New Horizon Counseling Center in Valley Stream.
Peninsula Counseling Center would have done just that had the facility and its operations not been awarded to New Horizon Counseling Center by the state and Nassau County when PCC ran into trouble. NHCC declined to say what that trouble was, but acknowledged that a restructuring had been needed.
NHCC started in Ozone Park in 1980 and developed clinics in the Rockaways. The provider’s mission was to provide mental health services in underserved communities that needed them, according to Flora Bienstock, the Valley Stream location’s chief clinical officer. The state had closed its mental hospitals, and patients suffering from a range of mental illnesses suddenly found themselves trying to function in society on their own.
In addressing those urgent needs, NHCC established a model of identifying the underserved and offering them services. In the past two years, Bienstock said, a lack of services for the developmentally disabled became apparent, so NHCC set up programs that would “help clients function to their optimal level.”
While NHCC already served clients in Nassau County, its acquisition of PCC, the largest mental health service provider in the county, established its first physical footprint. That came with the county’s only remaining day program for people with developmental disabilities, which offers a “full gamut” of services, Bienstock said.
Since the acquisition, the center claims it has sped up the process for getting appointments, met with other providers in the area and increased its hours of operation.
Source: http://liherald.com/valleystream/stories/Counseling-center-extends-reach,70418
