Community Partner: HumanKind
Started in 1903 as a residential home for orphans and later expanded to serve adults with intellectual disabilities, HumanKind has a long history of serving children and families in central Virginia. Today with a focus on fulfilling its mission of strengthening individuals, families and communities through care, counseling and education, HumanKind offers multiple programs and services across Virginia.
These programs cover everything from personal finance education to mental health counseling in addition to early childhood resources and services for adults with disabilities. Centra has partnered with HumanKind to support many of these programs through cross-collaboration in addition to grants and sponsorships.
One of these active collaborations is the Motherhood Collective (info on TMC) which works to equip and empower women from preconception to postpartum through evidence-based education and social support programming. Examples of this programming include support groups for women experiencing perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) and those who are walking through infertility, miscarriage or still-birth. To read more about how Centra has partnered with the Motherhood Collective, keep scrolling and read about this month’s person of Centra, Katie Page, CNM.
HumanKind’s Blackwater Counseling Services provides an integrative, person-centered approach in addition to evidence-based therapies to meet the needs of individuals, couples and families in care. Blackwater Counseling received a $15,000 grant from Centra last year to provide scholarship spots for individuals who couldn’t afford services and Centra providers actively refer to Blackwater.
Another vital program offered by HumanKind, Healthy Families, is dedicated to empowering new parents on their journey from prenatal care to their child's fifth birthday. Focusing on positive parent-child interactions and providing education on healthy development and family functioning, the program's dedicated staff offers invaluable guidance and support. Centra serves as the top referral source for Healthy Families, with Heather May, a Perinatal Navigator, contributing her expertise on the program's advisory committee.
It is evident that Centra and HumanKind have a shared commitment to caring for and educating our communities so that individuals across central Virginia are strengthened and provided with the resources they need to live their best lives.