Mission Statement
The Pilsen Wellness Center, Inc. actively seeks to provide holistic human services to individuals and families through culturally sensitive education, prevention, treatment, and recovery interventions.
These services are geared toward supporting family relationships, facilitating community empowerment, and stimulating economic development.
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Vision Statement
The Pilsen Wellness Center strives to become an internationally recognized catalyzing force in culturally competent human services by providing a seamless array of outcome based services fostering “Empowerment through Wellness.”
History
The Pilsen Wellness Center began as an outgrowth of a federally funded program in 1967, and formally incorporated as a not-for-profit corporation in June 1975. The organization has historically served the predominantly Latino-origin communities of Pilsen (Lower West Side) and Little Village (South Lawndale) in Chicago, and has since expanded the original service areas to include Archer Heights, New City, Brighton Park, Gage Park, McKinley Park, and South Chicago as well as the suburban communities of Cicero, Berwyn, Stone Park, and Melrose Park, Illinois.
Formerly known as the Pilsen-Little Village Community Mental Health Center, Inc., the recent name change to the Pilsen Wellness Center, Inc. in April 2008 reflects the organization’s continued expansion into new service areas in keeping with their multi-dimensional approach to treatment and recovery interventions. Understanding wellness to mean an actively sought goal, which considers both physical and mental health, prevention and education, the new name better defines the Center’s holistic treatment approach.
The Pilsen Wellness Center expanded its original Mental Health programming to include substance abuse treatment, youth and HIV prevention services, as well as alternative secondary education. With 10 programming sites located through-out the Chicago land area, it remains one of the few human services organizations with a 90 percent bilingual and bicultural staff.
The agency provides culturally sensitive services to a multicultural population with limited financial resources. The organization’s mission has remained providing quality human services to economically disadvantaged children and families which seek to preserve and support family health, stimulate economic development, and facilitate community empowerment through wellness.
Culturally Competent Treatment
Pilsen Wellness Center values the uniqueness of the bicultural person. This translates into supportive programs that appreciate how language and culture influence therapeutic strategies. This in depth understanding facilitates a process of healing for participants by taking into consideration how levels of acculturation and the immigrant experience impact treatment services. Common among many Latinos, the immigrant experience is one of the most stressful events a family can undergo. The Center’s staff helps families address acculturation, behavioral, emotional, and adjustment problem issues.
Pilsen Wellness Center employs a 90 percent bilingual and bicultural staff. Our expertise rests on our ability to grasp the significance of acculturation and how life experiences are encoded in language. Facilitating the participant’s access to the affective or “emotional” aspect of a problem through the language in which it was experienced is a fundamental treatment component. Language and its subtleties, strongly related to identity, and expertise in treating acculturation difficulties are a hallmark of our services provision.
Our professionally trained staff recognizes that the overall needs and dynamics of the family are integral to successful problem resolutions. Strong organizational and administrative linkages between and among our various programs ensure consistency, interagency cooperation, and optimal interventions.
As an agency with deep roots in the community, our philosophic approach to general service delivery considers the traditions, values and culture of our program participants. The organization provides social services that are holistic, family focused, and tailored to the needs of our participants.
41.8496435
-87.6757287
Pilsen Wellness Center
2319 South Damen Avenue
Chicago, IL 60608
Posted in Health & Wellness
