AGENCY BACKGROUND

Advantage Counseling Service, INC. (ACS) has been a support agency to governmental agencies, such as the Department of Human Resources and the Department of Family and Children Services for six years. This past year ACS entered into an agreement with the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice to provide wrap around juvenile services. The geographical areas, which ACS serves, incorporate fifty counties in Georgia. The agency employs over fifty people, including licensed professionals such as psychologists, psychiatrists, licensed social workers, Master's level social workers, and Bachelor level paraprofessionals.

Headquartered in Jonesboro, Georgia, ACS provides First Placement / Best Placement Family Assessment services, Home Evaluations for DFCS, Homestead Counseling, Parent Aide, Early Intervention services, and Substance Abuse testing. In addition, ACS provides in-home services for community-based Juvenile Justice clients and families. Services include in-home counseling, crisis intervention, in-home monitoring, intervention for families, and wraparound services. Services are designed to provide a continuum of alternatives to detention for pre-adjudicated youth and serve as a resource for the Department of Juvenile Justice.

ACS provides intensive, crises-oriented, short-term services to families where children are at risk of imminent placement. Our concept of operation is to provide a cluster of family support assessments and intervention services provided to prevent unnecessary placement of children out of the family unit, or to provide for their immediate reunification for care. Not all out of home placement is unnecessary. If a child is being seriously or deliberately maltreated or causing harm to others, an out of home placement may be required to assure family safety.

ACS services focus on family counseling, individual counseling, in-home intervention, basic living skills, substance abuse prevention, anger and stress management. Our professional staff is particularly adept in providing these services to families, and has a unique ability to deal with neglect issues such as supervisory, emotional, medical, prenatal/neonatal, and educational neglect. ACS's concept of operation incorporates a holistic and family-centered approach involving as many family members as possible, also utilizing extended family resources, and community based services.

Family access to community-based resources that promote shared values and address common needs for the mutual benefit of the family unit is encouraged and supported. ACS has in place the necessary support systems that clearly meet the special needs of the family that also respect the ethnic and cultural roots that serve as a foundation for effective parenting. This focus empowers the family leadership to be independent and self-sufficient. More importantly, it serves as the cornerstone for rectifying inappropriate parenting practices. ACS recognizes that a number of social ills threaten sound family values and practices and specifically, alcohol, illicit drug, gang violence and anti-social skills that put families at risk. ACS personnel are adequately insured to provide a full range of counseling services that protect governmental organizations from unnecessary liability.