April 2020
COVID-19 Updates
This is a unique, and maybe even a little confusing time for all of us. Please continue to make the health and safety of yourself and your family a priority. For continued updates and resources regarding this situation, visit our website.
Mental Health and Addiction Agency Updates
We will continue to post updates to agency services on our website as we become aware of them. For a snapshot of current agency information, click here.
Thrive Through COVID-19 With a Resilient Mindset
The Coronavirus has shaken up our normal routines for the time being, but not forever. Learn how to create a resilience mindset and do more than survive during this current situation. Click here to learn more from Dr. Diane Karther.
Awareness Topic

Family Activities During Closers
Our current circumstances may have left us with "new normal" but that doesn't mean it has be boring. Check out this list by the Ohio Department of Health, for fun activities you can do with your family.
National Child Abuse Prevention Month
April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. This month and throughout the year, we encourage all people and organizations to help make Ashland County a better place for children and families. Especially during this time of uncertainty for children and families, we can help prevent child abuse and neglect. We can do this by giving parents in our community the knowledge, skills, and resources they need to care for their children. You have a part to play in creating strong and thriving children, youth, and families. 
Mental Health Tips
You Can Help Reduce Child Abuse
Now is the time to pay attention to your children, as well as the neighbor children, because going to school could have been a refuge for them. In our community, some of the most effective ways to reduce the risk of child abuse and neglect are to promote protective factors. Research shows that healthy families maintain protective factors in their child’s life.  

Protective factors are attributes of people, families, communities, or the larger society that lessen risk and promote healthy child development and well-being: 

• Nurturing an attachment 
• Knowledge of parenting and of child and youth development
• Parental resilience 
• Social connections 
• Concrete supports for parents 
• Social and emotional competence of children

To learn more about how to combat childhood adversity, listen to what Ashland has to say about the ACEs study by clicking the link below.
“If we could somehow end child abuse and neglect, the eight hundred pages of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM ) would be shrunk to a pamphlet in two generations.”

John Briere