Local children’s mental health organization debuts enhanced Santa Maria therapy space

SANTA MARIA, Calif. – A special open house on Wednesday officially unveiled newly enhanced office space in Santa Maria for CALM, the Santa Barbara County nonprofit organization that provides mental health services for children and families.

During the event, visitors were able to tour the site and learn how the new space has been created to offer CALM clients improved services, as well as prepare the organization to meet its future needs.

"We are launching our expanded new offices," said Alana Walczak, CALM President/Chief Executive Officer. "We've added two new therapy rooms, bringing our capacity to eight therapy rooms, plus a multi-purpose room to meet children and families who are experiencing seeing whatever struggles they might need some support with."

The two new therapy rooms were previously used as office space for the organization, but are now completely remodeled, specifically designed to include only a small number of furnishings.

"Our existing therapy rooms have really been focused on play therapy," said Ashlyn McCague, CALM Development Director. "They're filled with toys, games, different activities that kids can do in therapy sessions. These new spaces are a little more minimal. They're meant to be sort of grounding low stimulus spaces so that our families can really just focus on healing in there because sometimes those extra activities can distract from the work at hand."

In addition to the two new therapy rooms, CALM has also expanded the size of its overall Santa Maria office space and has grown into other parts of the building, which it shares with an employment agency.

"It's the next evolution for Santa Maria," said Walczak. "We at CALM are so proud to be here in the Santa Maria Valley. I think this expansion, I hope, shares with the community that we're here for the long haul, that CALM wants to provide evidence-based, trauma-informed therapeutic services as long as it takes, and that we really want to be a resource for children, families and for the entire community. We have a resource library for our staff. We now have a multi-purpose room where we can host meetings with other providers, so we really hope that we can continue to be a hub for resiliency services throughout Santa Maria Valley."

CALM is based in Santa Barbara and also has an office in Lompoc. Walczak said similar therapy rooms currently exist in its two other CALM locations, but the new space, combined with the overall facility and offerings in Santa Maria now place it at the forefront of its operation.

"These spaces, this office truly is the model," said Walczak I think it's the most beautiful, office space, clinical space. We have throughout the county. So I'm really excited to welcome members of the Santa Maria community to come and see what we're building as the model space to do this clinical work. 

As the Santa Maria Valley continues to experience significant growth, CALM reports the need for its resources and services is experiencing similar increases.

"This is a community of children and families, and, it's a growing community of children and families," said McCague. "We're seeing increases of depression and anxiety amongst youth, but also very young children, and so being able to increase our space and hopefully our staff as well down the road, we can meet those increasing needs that we're seeing. We have a larger call list right now in Santa Maria than in our other offices because of the growing need."

For more information about CALM, click here to visit the official CALM website.