Minnesota Family Services Partnership

To embrace our mission, vision, values, and deep-rooted beliefs in a call for social interest in action, Adler Graduate School partners with various community organizations in offering discounted tuition scholarships. Our team recently met with each of our community partners to spotlight the social interest they have vested in our communities.

Greater Minnesota Family Services is a Non-Profit founded 25 years ago with the goal of working harmoniously with family and county agencies, to create effective services for families in rural Minnesota. Family-based counselors and therapists work within nearly 40 rural counties to provide therapy in the homes of individuals, families, and group counseling. They strongly believe that the family is the best place to resolve parent/child crisis. “Often children are placed out of the home, not because families are unwilling to change, but because community resources have not had the time or intensity of services to help the children have successful experiences in their homes and communities. Department of Human Services recently released a statistic that 70% of master level graduates move to metro areas, lessening the resources necessary to help families in need, leaving only 30% of graduates for rural areas.”

Greater Minnesota trains each new staff that joins the agency in a “Reflective Supervision” type of practice. It is a 2-day retreat where staff take time to learn more about themselves at an in-depth level and how that impacts their relationships with each other and the clients they serve. The retreat is an attempt to help counselors be more in touch with themselves (which can be overlooked in their busy/academic world) and find more internal motivation to practice better self-care and wellness.

Greater Minnesota’s services aim to focus on family conflict, health, unity, emotional abuse, neglect, social functioning, school performance, and prevention and reunification of children who are returning from out-of-home placements. They offer school and family mental health programs in 50 school buildings throughout Minnesota that work with youth on a one-to-one counseling basis and other programs that provide group counseling, skills, and therapy like the Challenge Program, Heartland Girls Ranch, and North Crow Group Home. These programs serve as therapeutic services and site-based intensive mental health programs.

Their early childhood services include Head Start programs, daycare, and SEED: Social Emotional Enrichment and Development programs which provide Day Treatment for young ones three hours per day. The SEED program helps children ages 3-5 with relationships, regulation, routines/exploration by focusing on social skills, therapeutic play, team building, family skills, and individualized attention. “Research suggests it [emotional intelligence] is responsible for as much as 80% of the successes in our lives.”

Additionally, the non-profit has a 17-bed Shelter Care in Willmar, Minnesota that provides short term crisis stays for youth and longer term group home placement for youth in need of more prolonged treatment.

Greater Minnesota Family Services’ has a unique G.M. Gives program which provides flexible funding for children and their families receiving services in assisting them to be more self-sufficient and enhance their circumstances. The program helps inspire real and lasting change for children and their families. Past G.M. Gives have gone to helping boys join Cub Scouts and assisting in the finances for therapeutic equine treatment. These funds are generated through donations only by staff and outside donors.  

To learn more about Greater Minnesota Family Services, contribute to their efforts, or find an internship placement, click here. Adler Graduate School is honored to partner with such charitable organizations that focus on giving back to the diverse communities we serve.