Patrice Munford meets Baltimore families at their most challenging moments. As a therapist with Catholic Charities’ Baltimore Child and Adolescent Response System (B-CARS) program, she works every day with children and families to help them deal with crisis situations. With Baltimore experiencing prolonged spikes in both violence and opioid related overdose deaths, the many children in the city face enormous chaos and stress.
“We have a lot of children who don’t know how to cope with the violence in their lives,” says Munford. “They may not know how to verbalize their feelings. They’ve had multiple deaths in their family due to homicide or overdose, and they don’t know how to cope.”
With financial and other support from Behavioral Health System Baltimore (BHSB), B-CARS provides hands-on services to children and adolescents who are in crisis and their families. The goal is to stabilize the young person and create a plan to help the family over the long term. At B-CARS, a licensed clinician assesses the young people for mental health and other health issues, and B-CARS’ staff provides ongoing counseling. That often means visiting the home to meet with family members — a better location to have a more honest conversation about the crisis — or going to the school to hear from teachers and counselors. B-CARS therapists make recommendations for ongoing services, including mental health treatment, substance use disorder treatment, and grief counseling. And B-CARS connects families with organizations that provide case management services to help the families stay on track with counseling and other supports.
