Counseling services
What we work on.
Individual, couples, family, and group counseling for every stage of life. Offered in person in Suffolk County Medford and Springfield Gardens Queens, or securely online. If what brings you here is not listed, call anyway. It is almost certainly familiar ground.
You do not need to have it sorted out before you come. We will meet you where you are.
Family, marriage, and parenting
Work with couples, parents, and whole households, including the families that are formed rather than born into.
Couples and marriage
Communication that has stopped working, recurring arguments, trust and intimacy, parenting disagreements, and decisions about staying or separating. Both partners are heard. Neither is put on trial.
Marital workshops
Group sessions for couples, and for congregations that want to strengthen marriages rather than only repair them. Practical, plainly spoken, and built for people who would never describe themselves as the therapy type.
Parenting workshops
Discipline that works, talking to teenagers, screens and social media, school advocacy, and knowing when a difficulty warrants outside help. Offered to individual parents and as a series for schools and churches.
Foster care
Support for foster, kinship, and adoptive families, and for the children placed with them. Attachment and behavior after disruption, contact with birth families, working with caseworkers and agencies, and preparing for permanency.
Teen pregnancy and young parents
Counseling for expectant and new young parents, and for the families around them. Decisions, school and childcare, relationships with partners and parents, and building the practical confidence the first year demands.
Relationship issues
Family conflict, estrangement, friendships, workplace relationships, and adult children with aging parents. Individual work on relationships is available whether or not the other person is willing to attend.
Bereavement and grief
Support after the death of a spouse, parent, child, or friend, including complicated grief, anticipatory grief during a long illness, and the losses that others expect you to be over by now.
Children, teenagers, and school
Counseling for young people, and the school-facing work that often matters just as much. If a school meeting is driving this, see also educational advocacy below.
Children and adolescents
School difficulties, behavior at home, bullying, social struggles, and the worries young people rarely say out loud. Extensive school social work experience informs this work, including collaboration with parents, teachers, and school teams when helpful.
Individual Education Plan (IEP)
Help understanding what an IEP actually commits the district to, whether the one you have been offered matches your child, and what to do when the plan on paper is not the plan being delivered. Includes preparation for, and attendance at, meetings.
Behavioral Improvement Plan
Support around functional behavioral assessment and behavior intervention planning. What the plan should actually say, how progress is supposed to be measured, and what to ask for when a child is being disciplined for behavior the plan was meant to address.
Educational advocacy
Standing with parents in the school system. Committee on Special Education referrals, evaluations, eligibility, 504 plans, discipline and suspension hearings, and placement and transition.
College preparation
Guidance for students and parents through the pressure of applications and the leap to independence. Managing stress and expectations, and building the self-advocacy and coping skills that determine whether the first year goes well.
Mentoring
Structured one-to-one mentoring for young people who need a steady adult presence, drawing on experience recruiting, training, and supervising mentors for district-wide school programs.
Veterans and their families
A significant part of this practice's clinical experience is with veterans, including ongoing work at the Babylon Vet Center in West Babylon, part of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Readjustment Counseling Service and tied to the VA medical center in Northport, where counseling is provided specifically to veterans who have served in combat.
Combat readjustment
Coming home is not one event. Sleep, anger, hypervigilance, crowds, driving, drinking, and the distance that opens up between you and the people who waited for you. You will not spend the first session explaining what a deployment is.
Support is also available to spouses, partners, parents, and adult children, who often carry a version of it themselves.
Post-traumatic stress
Intrusive memories, hypervigilance, nightmares, and avoidance, whether the source was combat, assault, an accident, or prolonged stress. Grounded in hospital experience directing post-traumatic stress groups for veterans at the Northport VA.
This work is offered to veterans and to civilians alike.
A note on VA care. This is a private practice and is not part of the Department of Veterans Affairs. If you are eligible for care from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) or from a Vet Center, including the Babylon Vet Center, you are entitled to it directly and at no cost to you. We will gladly point you toward it rather than compete with it.
Adults, seniors, and life transitions
Individual counseling for the things that make an ordinary week hard to carry.
Anxiety
Persistent worry, panic, social fear, health anxiety, and the sleeplessness that comes with them. Work focuses on understanding the pattern and developing practical strategies you can use in the moments that matter.
Depression
Low mood, exhaustion, loss of interest, hopelessness, and difficulty carrying ordinary responsibilities. We look at what is sustaining it, including circumstances and environment, and at what can realistically change first.
Anger management
Understanding what sits underneath the anger, recognizing the early signs, and building responses that protect your relationships and your standing at work. Court-referred and employer-referred participants are welcome.
Life transitions
Divorce, job loss or change, immigration and resettlement, becoming a caregiver, illness, an empty house, retirement. Transitions are disorienting even when they are chosen. Support during them is not a sign of failure.
Senior citizens
Loss of a spouse or friends, retirement, changing health and independence, isolation, and the question of what this stage of life is for. Sessions move at a pace that respects you, in person or by video if travel is difficult.
Substance use
Counseling around drinking and drug use for the person concerned and for the family living with it. This practice is approved by the New York State Office of Addiction Services and Supports (OASAS), so an assessment can be provided alongside counseling where a court or an employer requires one.
Educational advocacy
Someone in your corner at the school meeting.
Parents are routinely expected to walk into a room of administrators, psychologists, and special education staff and hold their own on a process no one ever explained to them. Educational advocacy means going in with someone who has sat on the other side of that table many times before.
Long service inside a New York school district, first as a school social worker preparing psychosocial histories for the Committee on Special Education and later as Coordinator of Student Services, means knowing how these decisions actually get made. It also means knowing what a district is obligated to provide, and which requests carry weight.
- Committee on Special Education (CSE) and IEP meetings. Preparation beforehand, attendance with you, and follow-up on what was promised.
- Evaluations and eligibility. Requesting them, understanding the results, and challenging findings that don't match the child you know.
- 504 plans and classroom accommodations. Securing supports and making sure they are actually delivered.
- Discipline and suspension hearings, including manifestation determination reviews.
- Placement and transition. Program changes, and planning for the move to middle school, high school, and beyond.
- Consultation for schools. Districts and agencies also engage this practice directly on student services structure and compliance.
When parents call
Most families reach out at one of four moments: the district has denied an evaluation or found a child ineligible, an IEP is not being followed, a suspension or hearing is pending, or a meeting is scheduled next week and they do not want to walk in alone.
If any of those describe where you are, call, and mention the date of the meeting.
Advocacy, not legal representation. This practice provides professional educational advocacy and consultation. It does not provide legal representation in impartial hearings or litigation. Where a matter calls for a special education attorney, you will be told so plainly.
Practical details
What sessions look like
Counseling is offered individually, with couples, and with families. A typical session runs about 45 to 60 minutes. How often you come is decided together and revisited as things change. Weekly at the start is common, moving to every other week or monthly as you gain ground.
Evening and weekend appointments may be available depending on schedule. Sessions can be held at either office, or online if travel, health, or distance makes that easier.
Fees & payment
At this time the practice does not accept insurance. Counseling is paid for directly, and we would rather you knew that now than discovered it at your first appointment. The practice is exploring the possibility of accepting insurance and hopes to be able to do so in the near future. This page will be updated when that changes.
For many clients that turns out to be a quiet advantage. While care is paid for directly, nothing about it is submitted to a health plan, which means no diagnosis recorded on your insurance file, no cap set by someone else on how many sessions you may have, and no treatment plan sent to a third party for approval. What you share is protected by law and professional ethics, with the limited exceptions explained at your first appointment and on our Privacy page.
Cost is a real consideration and it deserves a straight answer rather than a brochure. Call and ask. You will be told the fee for what you actually need before you commit to anything. You also have a federal right to a written estimate in advance: see Your right to a Good Faith Estimate.
Acceptable forms of payment are cash, Zelle, Venmo and Paypal. Whichever you use, you will be told the amount before the appointment rather than after it.
Common questions
Before your first session
Do I need a referral or a diagnosis to start?
No. Most clients contact the practice directly, and no referral or diagnosis is needed to begin.
Do you accept insurance?
Not at this time. The practice is exploring the possibility of accepting insurance and hopes to be able to do so in the near future. For now counseling and assessments are paid for directly, and we say so plainly rather than leave anyone surprised later. One upside for now is privacy: while care is paid for directly, no diagnosis is reported to a health plan, and no insurer decides how long you may be seen. If you would like to try for out-of-network reimbursement through your own plan, ask when you call and we will tell you what paperwork we can provide.
Is what I say confidential?
Yes. Sessions are confidential, with the narrow exceptions New York law requires of every licensed clinician. Situations involving imminent danger to yourself or another person, suspected abuse or neglect of a child or vulnerable adult, or a valid court order. These are explained in full at your first appointment.
What should I bring to the first appointment?
Photo identification and a list of any current medications. Nothing else is required. You do not need to prepare a speech or organize your thoughts in advance.
Can my teenager be seen without me in the room?
Yes, and it is often the right structure. Parents are typically involved at the start and at intervals throughout, with an understanding about what is shared and what stays between counselor and young person. Set out clearly at the beginning so no one is surprised.
What if I am not sure counseling is right for me?
Call and say exactly that. A short phone conversation is enough to determine whether this practice fits what you need, and if it doesn't, you will be pointed toward something that does.
Take the first step.
You do not need to know what to call the problem, or to have it neatly explained. You only need to reach out.