Citrus Counseling Services Staff
The James Bernard and Mildred Jordan Tucker Fund through the Inland Empire Community Foundation will positively impact the endeavors of one San Bernardino County nonprofit.
Thanks to the recent grant, Citrus Counseling Services will be able to use the funding to install a much-needed ADA ramp in its facility.
“The grant is incredibly vital,” said Citrus Counseling Services Chief Executive Officer Roger Uminksi. “Getting funding to cover all the things we need is generally pretty tight. We’re basically in the healthcare business, and we serve an underserved community that is not very high in the socioeconomic scale.
“We often get the minimum rates that you can get from public-funded programs, and they cover just enough to provide the direct services,” he added. “There’s no margin available for us to do things like investing in our facilities, investing in upgrades, doing additional things like information technology, and so on. So, anything that we can get that helps, and makes the environment so much better for the clients that we serve.”
The nonprofit’s history is key to understanding how it operates today.
Citrus Counseling Services was founded as a Christian counseling service back in 1978 in Redlands. It emerged from the Redlands Area Interfaith Council.
“Originally, it was designed to provide higher-level pastoral care to members of the community here,” Uminski said. “I believe it was five local pastors, but it didn’t take long for them to find out that there was a much bigger need in behavioral health.”
In 1978, combining behavioral health and physical health became a unique protocol.
“Now we just call that cultural competency,” Uminski added. “Everybody should be good at doing that.”
Today, the organization has three locations, which occurred after merging with the Family Service Agency of San Bernardino, which has been operating since 1947.
“Both organizations are very much embedded in the communities that we serve,” Uminski said. “So going along with that cultural competency, we like to find people who are working here that are from the community, that are providing services to the community—people who really understand the community, which I think says a lot for the county of San Bernardino’s Department of Behavioral Health.”
In essence, the organization strives to make sure that people have diverse places to go where they’re comfortable receiving services.
Overall, Citrus Counseling Services has become one of the area’s more resourceful mental health clinics, providing comprehensive mental health services, education, training, bridging clients to community services.
“There’s still a stigma already attached to behavioral health, but it’s getting better,” Uminski said.
Mental health issues are in the spotlight this month. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, which aims to raise public awareness about key health matters. One hope is to also reduce stigma associated with mental illness while also promoting support for individuals and families affected by these conditions.
Early Childhood Services Staff
Uminski says the nonprofit is ignited by a strong desire to help any individual who needs “compassionate care to achieve mental wellness.” To that end, the organization provides qualified therapists who offer evidence-based treatments for a variety of matters—from programs specific to children as young as infants to students, trauma victims, and military families.
When asked if he’s seeing a greater need for support in one mental and behavioral health arena than another recently, he points out the aftereffects of COVID-19.
“Post-pandemic, the demand for support from school-age youth has really increased,” he said. “We’re holding steady in the early childhood area—the zero to eight-year-old population. But in trauma services, I think we’re just scratching the surface because there’s a limited amount of funding for the number of qualified individuals in San Bernardino County.
“We’re serving all the people that we can, and we’re staying incredibly busy,” he added.
Learn more about Citrus Counseling Services Training at ccs-cares.org
This story originally appeared in the Press Enterprise.
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