Connections Counseling Services LLC
Stroudsburg 570-424-5100 | Marshalls Creek 570-730-4211
Children and adolescents who experience trauma frequently have difficulty expressing their symptoms. We have advanced trained clinicians who have experience working with trauma victims. We address trauma, depression, anxiety and mood and behavioral issues that are impacting their lives on a child level through interactions, games, books, and play. Our team encourages children to express their feelings in non-verbal ways.
At Connections Counseling Services we help clients work through feelings they have and develop skills to help with their recovery from trauma, depression, and anxiety. We assist the client’s to learn affective and interpersonal regulation by creating a healing space for change to take place. By providing a safe and trusting therapeutic environment, we enable clients to improve their mental health and accept what they can and can not change. We have clinicians that are specialized in working with survivors of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Psychotherapy is aimed at helping a person with TBI understand the injury, accept the injury, and adjust relationships and roles due to the injury. We have a trained clinician who has advanced training working with the geriatric population.
We will use Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, empathy, trauma informed treatment, attachment theory, stress reduction, exploration of underlying trauma, exploring attachment patterns in the family, mindfulness, psycho education, skills teaching, exposure and desensitization, CBT, DBT, harm reduction strategies, and will be exploring other therapies and treatments as needed along with ongoing continuing education. We will help the client to develop a fluid narrative and integrate their trauma (event) into something that they experienced and survived; not as something that defines them.
In order to be effective, therapy needs to take place on a regular basis. The best results occur when appointments are consistently scheduled and regularly attended. Therefore, in the event you need to miss a scheduled appointment, rescheduling is much preferred over cancellation. In the event of a cancellation or reschedule, we request if you could give us several days or a week notification. Appointments canceled with less than 24 hours’ notice will be charged a cancellation fee of $50.00. Please note that insurance health plans do not pay for missed appointments; these charges will be entirely your responsibility. If you miss more than 3 sessions without notice you could lose your time or be terminated as a client. Please understand that others may want your time slot so we cannot just tolerate missed appointments. It is not fair to other clients or the therapists. We understand that on rare occasions emergencies do occur. In these circumstances, we will do our best to reschedule the appointment for an alternate time that week. In case of a psychiatric or medical emergency, please call 911, county crisis at 1-800-849-1868 or go to your local Emergency Room
If you attempt to contact us by email, we will make the same commitment of attempting to respond to you within 24 hours. We will use email for routine administrative issues, such as a request to cancel or reschedule appointments. We will not reply to messages about clinical conditions. If you need to reach us, please leave us a message at the office numbers- 570-424-5100 or 570- 730-4211. This is not for a life-threatening emergency or crisis as we cannot respond immediately. In that situation please contact county crisis at 1-800- 849-1868, 911 or go to the nearest ER. We will make every effort to return your call within 24-48 hours, with the exception of weekends and holidays. If you are difficult to reach, please inform us of sometimes when you will be available. If we will be unavailable for an extended time, we will provide you with the name of a colleague to contact, if necessary.
We will bill your insurance if we are in network. If out of network and we have a relationship with that insurance company we will bill the insurance first but you will be responsible for what they don’t cover. In some cases you will have to pay first and then will be reimbursed when insurance pays. Please understand it is on the insurance end for the length of time that it takes them to pay the providers. This can vary with each insurance company. Cash and check are due at time of session. In addition to weekly appointments, we will may charge an hourly fee of $25 to $150 for other professional services you may need; such as report writing, telephone conversations lasting longer than 15 minutes, attendance at meetings with other professionals you have authorized, preparation of records or treatment summaries, and the time spent performing any other service you may request of us. If you become involved in legal proceedings that require our participation, you will be expected to pay for our professional time. If your account has not been paid for more than 60 days and arrangements for payment have not been agreed upon, we have the option of using legal means to secure the payment. This may involve hiring a collection agency or going through small claims court. In most collection situations, the only information we release regarding a patient’s treatment is his/her name, the nature of services provided, and the amount due. Periodically, fees will be increased; no more than once per year. Clients will be informed in advance of any changes in fees. If clients are unable to afford the fee, they should discuss it with their therapist.
You have the right to end your therapeutic relationship at any time. We support all termination, for whatever reason. In order to initiate a productive departure process, we request that you give us advanced notice. An advance notice of several weeks, and for long term clients, several months. If for whatever reason, you are unable to provide such notice, we will do our best to facilitate the process in a way that feels beneficial to you. If your availability changes we will do our best to accommodate your needs but cannot guarantee that will have that time of day.
All communication between clients and our psychotherapists are kept strictly confidential. Your confidentiality is protected by law. We can only release information about our work together with your written permission. There are some exceptions:
We currently accept a variety of insurance policies, including Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Value Options (Beacon Health), Optum (United Healthcare), Magellan (Geisinger), MagnaCare, Medicare, Medicaid/MA, CCBH, CHIP, and others. We will work with other insurances on a case by case basis, i.e. Aetna, Cigna, etc. We are working to become paneled with many other insurances. Self-pay (cash or check only) is also an option.
Clients are discouraged from having their therapist requested or subpoenaed. The party that requests the therapist for any court appearance and testimony is responsible for all fees. It does not mean that the therapist’s testimony will be solely in the client’s favor. The Therapist will only testify to their professional opinion and to the facts of the case.
The following fees apply for court appearances:
PLEASE NOTE: Payment is due in advance. If a subpoena or notice to meet attorney(s) is received without a minimum of 48-hour notice, there will be an additional $250 “express” charge. Less then 1 weeks notice then $175 fee is added. If the case is reset with notice of less than 72 business hours, the requestor will be charged $250.
If the subpoena or request is asked by a different or opposing party, then these fees are the requirement of that party.
Expert Witness Fees – all of the above fees apply. Preparation time may be higher due to the amount of time needed and supporting resources that may need to be utilized.
Payment is due prior to proceedings.