NorthStar Learning Centers Mental Health Outreach Program offers an array of comprehensive and healing-centric mental and behavioral health services. Our clinicians are state-licensed and are trained in CBT, DBT, EMDR, and others. We seek to reduce stigma around receiving mental health care by developing a working partnership with our participants that highlights all of the preexisting knowledge and skills they bring to the table We accept most MassHealth and Blue Cross Blue Shield products as a form of payment for the services listed above.

Reducing the stigma around mental health care means meeting participants where they are at – mentally and physically – in environments where they feel safe and comfortable. Through partnership and collaboration with New Bedford Public Schools and Nativity Preparatory School, our clinicians provide individual and group therapy services to students in their school environment. This integration of service delivery allows students to access high-quality mental health services while decreasing the familial stress of accessing these services after school hours.

The Mental Health Outreach Program’s Diversion and Assistance Program (DAP) was developed in 2018 as a response to people with mental health challenges and substance use disorders being overrepresented in the criminal justice system. Through partnership and collaboration with the New Bedford Police Department and The Island Foundation, our clinicians are part of a pre- arrest police-based jail diversion program that utilizes the co-response model to provide immediate clinical intervention and referral to appropriate services on the scene of a police encounter.