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Times Record Community Matters: Spurwink

Community Matters is a monthly series highlighting the great work local nonprofits are doing in our area. Proudly supported by Priority Real Estate Group and Rusty Lantern Market

This month’s message from Spruwink: Going the Distance

Spurwink provides a broad range of mental health, education, and residential services for children, adults, and families in Maine. Spurwink offers specialized programs with a commitment to caring relationships and treatment expertise, providing access to care in areas of great need: mental health, addiction, trauma, autism, and intellectual and development disabilities.

Established as a program for eight boys in Portland in 1960, Spurwink has evolved to offer a full continuum of services for approximately 8,600 people across Maine each year. Spurwink’s vision of success is that those affected by behavioral health challenges and developmental disabilities live healthy, engaged lives in their communities. The agency makes its impact through a variety of programs and services:

Children’s’ Education and Residential Programs:

– Day treatment schools, combining special education and mental health services for youth, located in Portland, Lewiston, Chelsea, and Cornville.
– Residential treatment facilities for children and youth with trauma and developmental and behavioral disorders who are unable to live safely at home.
– Therapeutic preschool classrooms in Saco, focused on social-emotional enhancement and ASD.

Adult Services:

– Adult residential care, supporting adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and behavioral health needs in agency homes and with shared living providers.
– Community support services at multiple day program sites in York and Cumberland Counties.

Outpatient and Community Services:

– Clinical services provided by a Spurwink-affiliated psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists, and nurse practitioners.
– ShifaME, providing services for refugee and immigrant youth and their families in Portland, Lewiston, and Biddeford.
– Public school counseling in over twenty schools across four regional hubs.
– Spurwink Adult Behavioral Health, serving adults who suffer from severe and persistent mental illness and addiction.
– Targeted case management and functional family therapy.
– Behavioral health homes, offering integrated mental health and medical care.
– Treatment foster care, placing children with special needs in homes with licensed adults in eleven Maine counties.

Other Services:

– Center for Safe and Healthy Families, Maine’s only forensic child abuse center, providing medical, psychological, and emergency evaluations for children and youth.

Learn more about Spurwink , or how to volunteer or donate by visiting spurwink.org.