Volunteer at COTS SE Clinics
Guidelines for SE Volunteers
Contact us to find out about our next orientation:
Friday, October 10th, 1 to 3 pm
Explore offering SE to people who are homeless in your own community
Dear Bay Area SE Community,
Deborah Boyar, Patricia Meadows and Lee Wylie invite you to join us in a deeply rewarding and worthwhile project, as we continue to develop our offering of SE to homeless people through COTS in Petaluma.
Our first SE Clinic at the COTS Center for Homeless Children and Their Families (the Family Shelter) is well-established, and we now plan to launch a second Clinic this fall at COTS’ second and larger shelter, the Mary Isaak Center, which can house 134 single adults. We will soon be needing more SE volunteers to staff our new clinic!
We began this project in April 2006 by consulting, educating, and working with the staff of COTS. Together, we explored how they could integrate basic SE principles and skills into their programming, and into the lives of their participants – the parents and children who live at the Family Shelter for a few months as they rebuild their lives on many fronts.
The COTS staff and Executive Director have welcomed us most fully, and made an ongoing commitment to integrate SE into more and more of their offerings. COTS is an incredibly progressive place that must be seen and experienced to be believed. We hope you'll get a feel for it by reading some of the material on this site (there are also some short videos).
Our SE clinic has now expanded to two afternoons a week at the Family Shelter, and is well-supported by the center's dedicated staff and a committed core of SE volunteers. We are all very pleased with the enthusiastic response the clinic has received. While the current number of volunteers seems to be meeting the needs of the Family Shelter population, we continue to welcome SEPs who may feel called to work with the homeless to consider volunteering.
In fact, many new volunteer opportunities will soon be available as we expand our SE Clinic to a second nearby site in Petaluma. Planning is currently underway to launch our next SE Clinic on October 15, 2008 at the Mary Isaak Center. In April, we offered the Mary Isaak staff a special orientation to SE and our SE Clinic at the family shelter, and they were very excited about the possibility of bringing SE to their adult facility and its residents.
We welcome those who have interest in joining our efforts and in working within the COTS system, which is a very integral and comprehensive model of providing services to people who are homeless, to contact us about volunteer opportunities within the COTS SE Clinics.
Now that we’ve begun to see the outcomes of a very focused, short-term SE approach with this population, we’d like to involve others from our Bay Area SE community, so that many more homeless people can benefit from receiving SE sessions and learning basic SE practices to add to their expanding life skills.
We invite all SEPs, as well as SE students who have completed at least the Intermediate Level of training, to attend our next orientation for potential volunteers to the SE Clinic at COTS; please email for information and registration. If you decide to join our clinic and volunteer your skills, we ask that you be willing to make a 2-hour per month commitment (two SE sessions per month). We’d like you to consider at least a 3-6 month commitment. If our own experience is any indication, we trust that the phenomenal inspiration and personal rewards you’ll receive from your participation will keep you coming back!
SE Clinics are held at the COTS Center for Homeless Children and Their Families every Wednesday from 4:00 to 6:00 pm, and also every Thursday, from 3:00 to 5:00 pm. At the Mary Isaak Center, we will begin our clinic on October 15 on Wednesday afternoons from 3:00 to 5:00 pm, and then expand to that same time on Thursdays as we have more volunteers.
If you’d like to help serve a highly motivated population who are very eager to heal and restore balance to their lives, we encourage you to investigate this wonderful opportunity. It’s a great way to deepen your SE skills in an enormously gratifying setting, and also provide meaningful service to local homeless families. We welcome all who feel called to participate in this project with us!
And, if you'd like to explore offering SE in support of homeless people in your own community, please see our 'How to' page.
Please email Patricia Meadows or call her at 415.883.8321 to indicate your interest in volunteering, as well as to register for the upcoming orientation. In the meantime, for further information about our project, please see this article in the Spring 2007 FHE newsletter.
Warmly,
Deborah Boyar, Patricia Meadows and Lee Wylie
PS: SEPs may find interesting and helpful the research on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and their impact on adult life. Virtually every study shows that ACEs are strong predictors of homelessness.