DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION, and accessibility

We acknowledge that our current staff does not accurately represent our value of racial diversity.

While racial diversity is a strong value we hold as an organization, many systemic barriers and biases get in the way of being able to live up fully to those values. Our leadership is predominantly White and works regularly in their own personal therapy and professional trainings to continue to unpack their biases. We partner with organizations, such as The Unlearning Riot and many other trainers and speakers, to bring comprehensive training to our staff on working with BIPOC+ clients every week in our staff meetings. We work with several local universities to advocate for more diversity in graduate applicants, given that the initial barrier to bringing on BIPOC therapists is lack of diversity in the accepted graduate student pool. Our owner, SC Nealy, offers free and pay-what-you-can supervision to LMFT and LPC residents of minority groups in an attempt to remove the steep financial barrier that required supervision during residency and pre-licensed periods puts on pre-licensed therapists. We actively seek out ways to bring in more diverse applicants, marketing to HBCUs and providing guest professor roles at universities that have more diverse students. Unfortunately, the counseling field  and institutions that guard it continues to struggle with diversity in many ways, and we are committed to continuing to work hard in opposition to those barriers.

We acknowledge that choosing not to take insurance reduces our accessibility to many folx looking for counseling.

Taking insurance would require providing additional documentation on clients, clinically inappropriate diagnoses, and other practices that we don't find ethical , could bring great harm to clients, and could put client's personal information in unsafe hands given the current political situation our country is in. Therefore, we're not willing to accept insurance now or in the future. It's incredibly important to us that we're able to meet the needs of our clients in ways that are accessible to their needs, including addressing financial, safety, and privacy concerns. We work hard to offer 25% of our services to pro bono and sliding scale clients, while still making sure our therapists are able to make a living wage themselves. Additionally, we partner with many organizations like Asylum Works, the Wanda Alston Foundation, Pineapple Support, SMYAL, and more to provide services free to their clients through grants funded by the organizations. 

We acknowledge that our in person location, though private, occupies historical land owned by Native American tribes indigenous to Virginia. 

Arlington County historically was once home to the Pamunkey, Piscataway, and Tauxenent  tribes (read more about the land's history here). We acknowledge that these places and their Indigenous inhabitants exist without rigid political borders and boundaries maintained by settlers and settler governments. We acknowledge the continuing presence of Indigenous nations  and our responsibility to repair unhealthy relationships and to steward all life. We attempt to work in small ways toward this repair with monthly monetary donations to Pamunkey Indian Tribe Housing Fund, which assists eligible tribal citizens and their families in the acquisition and maintaining of affordable housing.