The Bridge is a nonprofit community-based organization that provides behavioral health care services designed to strengthen and support the family and to promote the personal growth of children, adolescents, adults, and families. Founded in 1971, we have a long-term commitment to helping children and families in the Caldwell’s, Irvington and greater Essex and Union counties to overcome mental health challenges that threaten to derail lives of children and adolescents, and tear families apart. Our vision is to promote balance, healing, and hope.

In the last fiscal year, The Bridge served a total of over 3,500 children, adolescents, adults, and families.

Peace Model Project

The Peace Model Project is an elementary school-based counseling and intervention program developed by The Bridge and the Caldwell-West Caldwell School district. PMP was launched in 2015 through a national funding initiative by the US Department of Education in response to the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2014. There was a call at the national level for innovative partnerships between community mental health and schools to better meet the growing mental health challenges impacting elementary-aged children and their families.

The Peace Model team delivered an exceptionally high amount of counseling to individual students and families. Throughout the 2019-20 school year, we served over 1,100 students and families. Thirty three percent of elementary students received individual counseling and 20% of students received on-going counseling to address issues such as emotional regulations, social skills, family stressors, grief & loss, and other risk factors for future mental health issues. In addition, Peace Model counselors were able to connect over 5% of students who were most at-risk with mental health support outside of school. Another 5% of our total elementary families were connected by Peace Model to community resources, including childcare, social services, and school-based interventions.

The Peace Model counselors work closely with teachers to consult and create innovative interventions to support students. In 2019-20, the Peace Model counselors provided consult regarding individual students to over 80% of the elementary teachers and to over 50% percent about group/classroom dynamics & interventions to improve learning outcomes.

More than 8% of elementary students in Caldwell-West Caldwell participated in structured psycho-educational groups to strengthen social skills, conflict resolution, coping with change and self-esteem. (We anticipated that this number would double if it were not for the pandemic.) Surveys of participants and their parents showed that over 90% felt more confident in connecting and socializing with peers and would recommend participation in our groups to others.

Five years later after its inception, the benefit of the Peace Model Project was never more evident than during the COVID-19 pandemic.

On March 13, 2020, the Caldwell-West Caldwell school district closed in response to State orders due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The schools initiated remote learning strategies, but our elementary students were not using computers within the classroom settings before this crisis, making the transition especially difficult.

The Peace Model Project responded to this unexpected and unprecedented crisis quickly, and continued to provide multi-tiered, programmatic support to students, families, faculty, and administrators:

Peace Model counselors conducted outreach to families and students who were most at-risk for emotional, learning, and severe stress (including grief & loss). The outreach was conducted by phone, email, and scheduled meetings on remote platforms.

Peace Model counselors continued to infuse stress management, coping skills and socialization opportunities through customized programming that was offered three times per week on remote learning platforms:

Mindfulness Mondays taught parents and children grounding, breathe work and calming techniques at developmentally appropriate levels that could be practiced at home; What’s Up Wednesdays were small group sessions by grade level that were offered live to promote social skills maintenance and connection with peers;

Feel Good Fridays were personal, videorecorded lessons by Peace Model counselors that focused on positive thinking, gratitude and cultivating hope. Peace Model counselors teamed with In-District Liaison to deliver a three-part Professional Development series called “Self-Care for Teachers/Staff.” The sessions were designed to encourage teachers and staff to acknowledge their own stressors during the crisis while learning self-care strategies & skills. Topics included: Grief: When It’s Complicated; Uncertainty, Change & Staying in The Present; and Noticing Joy & Finding Gratitude.

We are extremely proud of the fact that the Peace Model Project delivered almost the same amount of counseling and intervention support to students while on remote learning platforms as during a typical schoolyear. We believe that our success was born out of the unique model of this program – a true partnership between community mental health and public schools.

School-Based Youth Services/ The Imani Center

The Imani (Swahili for Faith) Center is The Bridge’s comprehensive program for students at Irvington High School, located in the parking lot of the High School, and Making Achievement Possible, a program for middle school students at University Middle School, also located in Irvington, NJ. During FY 2019-20, the Imani Center provided services to 1,184 students in Irvington High School and Middle School.

710 students participated in Irvington High School Based Programs.

• Individual, group, and family therapy sessions through qualified therapists. Among the issues addressed were family conflict, academic issues, immigration issues, homelessness, depression, domestic violence, and general adolescent development issues were some of the problem areas addressed
• Monthly programs with the Congregational Church of Short Hills include tutorials for Creole and Spanish speaking children, translation services for the school and working with bilingual parents. The Church provides food once per month through the Oasis program, as Irvington does not have adequate food resources. The program is conducted in coordination with the Irvington School District Superintendent.
• Academic Support/Tutoring helps students with homework and other school assignments on an ongoing basis.
• Cooking Classes gave the students an opportunity to prepare meals at home and for some, career preparation.
• Teen Strong a Peer to Peer group addresses how to avoid getting involved in human trafficking, unhealthy relationships, and rape.
• English as a Second Language summer program helped students become more proficient in reading and writing English.
• The Transition program for eighth graders preparing to enter high school in the fall, aided students in adjusting to high school and ensuring readiness.
• Monthly events where held at the Imani Center to promote and support the youths Mental Wellbeing. Topics included but were not limited to anxiety, goal setting, healthy relationships, and more.
• Students participated in a variety of community service projects, including crocheting blankets, valentine cards for veterans, assistance in the Irvington Court System, Black Lives Matter, a Township event, and more.
• During COVID:
  • Virtual Zoom sessions utilized Art for Healing, which provided students the opportunity to explore their emotions by increasing self-expression, developing skills that support resilience and discover additional ways to cope with pain, isolation or anxiety that support healing. Each student in attendance was provided with an art kit
  • Over 150 masks were created by the youth of Irvington and distributed to the youth and families in the Irvington community.
  • The Our Voice Matters Campaign was created to have an outlet for the youth to advocate not just for the Imani Center, but for topics that matter to them. The ongoing campaign includes a weekly podcast that can be heard on the Imani Center’s multiple social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and theimanisafespace.com).

162 students participated in Making Achievement Possible (MAP) program for middle school students:

• Individual, group, and family therapy sessions were provided through qualified therapists. Family conflict, academic issues, immigration issues, homelessness, mother daughter conflicts, anger, depression, domestic violence, and general adolescent growth issues are among the problem areas of these students.
•  Teen Outreach Program (TOP) in partnership with Central Jersey Family Health Consortium that combines curriculum with community service learning to bolster socialemotional learning and resilience served 32 students. Topics included bullying, healthy eating habits, anger, and self-esteem.
•  Tutoring services after school were provided on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays.
•  MAP Leadership Club met every other Thursday and guided 55 children on developing leadership skills in school and the community.
• Facilitated a Uniform giveaway to 67 students in need to ensure school participation. The Bridge Y
• MAP Book Club helps children to read, comprehend and then discuss the books.
• Middle School girls lunch club addressed social-emotional learning issues.
•  Four-week summer enrichment program for 24 children that included six trips outside of Irvington.
• Spelling Bee – hosted for the eighth year in a row, teaches students vocabulary skills and competitiveness.
• Translation assistance provided in French, Creole, and Spanish for 65 family-school communications.
• Two field trips during school breaks for students and families
• Organized fathers to greet students on the first day of school, followed by a breakfast for the fathers.
• Virtual services provided to 63 students.
• Community Service at the Community Food Bank of New Jersey allowed children to help in community service values and principles.

90 students participated in the Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Initiative that encourages students to focus on dreams and goals to reduce the risks of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

17 teens who are about to age out of the foster care system participated in the Independent Living Program, learning life skills such as money management, food shopping and cooking, health education, employment resources and/or access to vocational training or college. Ninety percent of the teens reached all their goals for the program.

52 at risk youth were serviced in the Day Treatment Program. One-on-one counseling was provided to address life goals, difficulties, and obstacles they may be facing that is interrupting them from completing High School. As of October 1, 2020, the Day Treatment Program was defunded.

Family Preservation Services

Family Preservation Services (FPS) is an intensive, in-home crisis intervention and family education program for families whose children are at imminent risk of abuse, neglect, or out-ofhome placement, and for families preparing to be reunified with their children.

The Bridge’s highly trained and dedicated staff is available to each family 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for up to eight weeks. Families throughout Essex and Union Counties are provided with 5 to 20 hours of direct face-to-face services per week. The intensive skill-based intervention includes a minimum of three home visits per week where staff teaches families a variety of skills which includes parenting, stress management, coping, communication, and anger management

The goal of FPS is to keep children safe, stabilize the family, prevent out-of-home placement, improve family functioning, and link families with appropriate community resources. All services are designed to build on family strengths. This year, Family Preservation Services assisted 88 families, including 205 children, who were referred by the Child Protection and Permanency local offices. Among those families:

• Thirty-five percent achieved their case goals
• Thirty-nine percent significantly achieved their case goals
• In Essex County, 96% of children remained with their families in the six months following completion of the Family Preservation Services program.
• In Union County, 94% of the children remained with their families in the six months following completion of the Family Preservation Services program.

During this fiscal year, the FPS program was impacted by the pandemic of COVID-19 regarding the delivery of services. On March 18, 2020, FPS discontinued the delivery of in-home services and moved to a remote platform to provide services via telehealth. After the fiscal year ended, during the week of July 13, 2020, at the direction of Department of Children and Families (DCF) leadership, FPS returned to the field using a hybrid approach that included a combination of inperson contacts and telehealth sessions. During the month of October 2020, FPS began to provide a combination of in-home, in-person, and telehealth sessions. Sessions have been provided in accordance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines to ensure the safety of the families as well as

Outpatient Mental Health and Substance Use Counseling

With outpatient offices located in both the West Caldwell and Irvington communities, The Bridge provides a stigma-free and culturally sensitive environment for children, adolescents, individuals, families, and couples who are struggling to cope with life’s challenges. At The Bridge everyone has an opportunity to receive the support they need to change, grow, and thrive.

People come to The Bridge with a wide range of issues that vary in severity and include anxiety, depression, mood disorder, loss, school refusal, trauma, life adjustments and transitions, substance use, gender identity, family conflict, parenting challenges and couples’ conflict.

Our clinical staff, whether working in person or remotely, takes a systemic approach in honoring and supporting the importance of the family/caregiver involvement to best support our client’s progress in treatment whenever possible and whenever appropriate to the client’s treatment goals. We continue to grow our outpatient clinical team and consequently can serve more clients. Over the course of this year, we have provided counseling to approximately 875 clients: providing approximately 3300 mental health sessions and approximately 2000 substance use counseling sessions.

When the Covid 19 pandemic hit our area, our team was able to come together and transform our program to provide 100% remote services via a variety of HIPAA compliant telehealth platforms. Our clinical staff continued to work tirelessly virtually to support our clients, as well as an influx of new clients both during the pandemic and following the social unrest at the murder of George Floyd, each of which created new stress levels in the community.

During this time, we continued to receive requests for counseling for many of the same issues but with a stronger intensity in volume of requests for counseling with a focus on adjustment to life during the pandemic, trauma, and loss. The substance use outpatient program initially transitioned to providing telehealth individual sessions and check-ins to provide support for our Intensive Outpatient Program clients. The drug screening process was adapted from an in-person urine screen to home delivery of oral swabs. During the onset of the summer, our agency absorbed the clients and some staff from Turning Point’s Outpatient Substance Use Program at their Verona location. This was a successful transition.

In addition to continuing to provide excellent counseling services, during the onset of the pandemic, and with guidance from an on-staff art therapist, the outpatient program started a weekly community art prompting on our Instagram page to offer art prompts that could be completed at home as a way of externalizing emotions and processing feelings during the pandemic.

We continue to respond to the needs of our clients and provide telehealth to ensure their safety and comfort level for counseling, recognizing that counseling can be more effective without a mask on so that facial expressions can be seen by both the client and the clinician.

As we moved into the new fiscal year, we were able to start providing in-person drug screens at the West Caldwell and Irvington outpatient offices while still providing oral swabs via home deliver to clients who are not comfortable coming to the office for an in-person drug screen. We are already working on plans for the Spring 2021 to re-open our outpatient clinical offices with a hybrid model to continue to serve clients remotely when appropriate and when we feel we can provide in-person counseling and play therapy safely we will offer that in the office as well. Our staff continues to engage in regular cultural humility trainings, and we will be adding a racial trauma component to our trainings to ensure that we are providing the best care possible for all our clients.

Stepping Stones

The Stepping Stones Women with Children program provides substance use disorder treatment to women with children that are involved with New Jersey’s Department of Child Protection and Permanency (DCP&P). The program also accepts women of childbearing age that are not involved with DCP&P. The women are from Newark, Irvington, Maplewood, East Orange, and West Orange and sometimes from Middlesex and Ocean Counties.

The women’s commonality is that they are pregnant, recently given birth or have children or caring for children and are experiencing a substance use disorder.

Through the use of didactic, individual and group sessions psycho-education is provided to increase the knowledge of the negative impact of substance use on family dynamics, the developing fetus, the brain, the inability to effectively parent, and the poor decision making, poor coping mechanisms that are part of the substance use cycle.

The women are introduced to prosocial, peer support recovery systems and mutual support groups to increase their exposure to positive reinforcement for abstinence and recovery-based living.

The Bridge was awarded a $5,000.00 grant that was used to transform office number sixteen into a functional therapeutic child care room. The talent of Kristin Wilson of the Newport Academy was used to get the project started and several other Bridge staff helped with designing the layout and choosing the colors and décor for the room. Plans were underway to design a structured curriculum for the children that spent time in the child care room to address social deficits, advance the role of play in their lives and increase their access to reading materials.

For the fiscal year July 2019 to June 2020 Stepping Stones admitted 118 mothers, 14 of them completed treatment. Seven mothers completed security officer training, via the National Council of Jewish Women NCJW and secured the SORA license to work as security guards.

• Stepping Stones continues to benefit from its affiliation with the Irvington Family Development Center (IFDC). Irvington Family Development Center (IFDC) assists with a variety of case management needs that The Bridge does not offer, such as pantry vouchers, housing lists and applications, and emergency pregnancy testing. IFDC houses the Partnership for Maternal & Child Health of Northern New Jersey. They provide psychoeducation on parenting, maternal and child health and access to medical care during pregnancy.
• The Women with Children’s program provides nutrition education through collaboration with Rutgers University Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP).
• The Nurturing Parenting curriculum developed by the Institute for Health and Recovery, is used to help address abusive and neglectful parenting to re-parent the parent to break ineffective transgenerational parenting styles.
• The National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) and their Education to Empowerment program offers the Stepping Stones women the opportunity to become economically stable via trainings that provide chances to work for wages above minimum wage. NCJW also provides feminine hygiene products and self-care items that the women most often cannot afford.

The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted the number of referrals received, which has created a sharp decrease in the number of mothers served by Stepping Stones. COVID-19 has impeded access to many of the community resources used to enhance the Stepping Stones programming. Toward the end of the fiscal year community resources that once provided referrals could not deliver their service via tele-health or was not open for business. Stepping Stones can provide services via tele-health and remains ready to continue serving the needs of the community.

Adolescent Educational Substance Use Outpatient Program (AESUOP)

The Adolescent Educational Substance Use Outpatient Program (AESUOP) is a partnership between The Bridge and Irvington High School designed to combat substance use among students, completed its second year. Teachers, administrators, counselors, and staff refer students they suspect of using substances to the AESUOP program. Upon referral, students are given a urine drug screen to identify what, if any, substances the student is using. When a student tests positive, s/he participates in an intake interview with The Bridge staff based on the Teen Addiction Severity Index (T-ASI). The T-ASI is a widely used interview style diagnostic tool that helps both the counselor and the participant identify underlying triggers for substance use as well as the participant’s willingness to engage in the program to combat substance use. The core of AESUOP is individual therapy.

Enrolled students participate in one 45-minute individual therapy session each week focused on helping the student understand and resolve the specific factors that contributed to substance use, including identifying triggers. One-on-one counseling validates the students’ emotions and helps turn those emotions toward positive change that helps the student reach for their goals and dreams. AESUOP provides a supportive climate where students do not feel judged for their perceived issues, but valued and appreciated for their unique abilities, talents, and dreams.

Each student will leave the program with a relapse prevention program, constructed with their therapist that incorporates their new self-awareness and identifies ways to avoid substance use triggers. In addition to traditional therapeutic tools, AESUOP also employs creative arts and provides other resources for the students as is feasible. For example, AESUOP provided cursive workbooks to help a student overcome anxiety and/or a hesitation to write in cursive due to not having learning this important tool

Through March, AESUOP completed the following:

• 29 students were referred for urine drug screening
• 151 urine drug screens were conducted.
• 17 students were assessed using the Teen-Addiction Severity Index.
• 388 case management activities, including scheduling (and re-scheduling) appointments, updating records, providing information to the school and more
• 136 letters to parents and school personnel
• 81 individual therapy sessions.
• 13 students completed the program.

The Coronavirus Pandemic forced the closure of schools and the AESUOP program in March 2020. While no new referrals were provided from the school during the closure, AESUOP and The Bridge staff continued to work with students already in the program, engaging them in telephone check in and telehealth sessions to help them cope with the trauma of the public health crisis and not revert to substance use.

The Bridge intends to reopen the program when the school resumes in classroom education, with the added feature that the Imani Center will take the lead in educational substance use program and case management, while The Bridge outpatient services at 50 Union Avenue in Irvington will handle the clinical assessments, drug screens, and individual and group counseling.