Coordinating Community-Based Services

As the coordinating unit of services for youth and families, Haddam and Killingworth Youth and Family Services (HKYFS) provides counseling services and support, direct prevention services, case management referral and follow-up services, resource support, and coordinating work with other local providers of health, social, and educational services.

HKYFS is a stand-alone nonprofit agency responsible for: assessing the needs of youth and the availability of resources and services to meet those needs; developing resources to improve programs, fill service gaps, and create or encourage innovative programs to meet assessed needs; conducting programs to promote public knowledge and understanding of youth problems and needs; advocating for groups of youth with unmet needs and for individuals who require help obtaining services; maintaining confidentiality when reporting youth data to the State Department of Education.

One of our goals this year was to re-establish our role as the go-to place in the community for family support and resources. Despite the limitations placed on our activities due to the pandemic, our clinical staff provided more than a thousand hours of counseling support, case management, guidance for families with acute needs, and support for youth referred to our Juvenile Review Board. We also worked more closely with RSD17 to support their counseling and guidance staff, and to provide training for students and staff and resources to supplement work done at the schools.

In the past year, we’ve been contacted by an increasing number of individuals in the community looking for resources and counseling and we’ve also seen an increase in school referrals and requests for training workshops. We supplied cutting-edge vaping detection equipment for middle and high schools and committed to providing school-wide workshops to increase social-emotional learning and bullying prevention. Our work with the high school age Ignite Youth Group and Resident State Troopers helped develop and promote messaging to increase awareness of social hosting laws and impaired driving. Demands for services to aid families during back-to-school and holiday times increased exponentially this year, and we worked with the Resident State Troopers to distribute contributions to organizations serving both Haddam and Killingworth.