History of the Walk In Counseling Center

The Walk-In Counseling Center was founded in 1969. The idea came about during a meeting of the Minnesota Chapter of Psychologists for Social Action during the Winter of 1969. A planning committee was formed, and it was decided that there was a need for a "free clinic" type program which would utilize the volunteer services of psychologists to provide psychological services to those in the community who could not otherwise obtain them.

The context of all of this was the social activism of the 1960's, and the most visible unmet need was to be found in the many alienated young people who had drifted to the the West Bank area of Minneapolis. Near the U. of Minnesota campus, this had become a haven for runaway youth and for those who were alienated. Many were "hippies." At the time a Free Store had been created to provide clothing and other items, but there were no social services.

In May of 1969 Minnesota's first "hotline" opened up on the West Bank. It was called Youth Emergency Service (YES) and utilized a mixture of lay volunteers and professionals who handled phone calls from young people. Soon after a runaway house called The Bridge for Runaways opened up nearby in the same area.

Also in May of 1969 it was decided that free, no-red-tape face to face counseling services could be offered by WICC volunteers at a site about a mile away from the West Bank. A group of pediatricians, nurses, and others had opened a free medical clinic for young people in south Minneapolis in an old house at 2421 Chicago Avenue South. The sponsor was the group which was developing a Children's Medical Center - something which had been in the planning for a number of years. It was called the Teenage Medical Service (TAMS).

Psychologist Marian Hall, who had been involved with Children's, suggested that many of the young people who were coming in to TAMS needed counseling and that TAMS did not have any psychologists. An arrangement was worked out whereby WICC volunteers began providing free counseling services in the evening at TAMS. It was not long before both TAMS and WICC became busy enough that TAMS moved next door to 2425 Chicago Avenue South.

WICC took over the house. The rent was for a time paid by TAMS, and a Steering Committee coordinated the functioning of WICC. There were no paid staff and the phone bills and other costs were paid with money given to TAMS. By late 1970 it was clear that both WICC and TAMS were needed and that funding was important, and a grant was written to the Governor's Crime Commission which had the responsibility of dispensing funds from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA). The LEAA was part of the "law and order" campaign of the Nixon administration and helped fund improvements in law enforcement. However, it also provided funds for the newly evolving "alternative agencies" which were attempting to serve alienated young people.

This was the era of Vietnam War protests and a good deal of civil disobedience. Drop-in centers, hotlines, free medical clinics, drug treatment programs, and other services were springing up throughout the United States. The federal government, seeing the failure of federal treatment programs for addictions in Lexington, Kentucky, passed new laws which helped foster the development of many "street drug programs."

This was also an era when business and foundation leadership in Minnesota began looking at what could be done for alienated young people. An organization called The Enablers was founded to help chanel some foundation gifts to the growing number of "alternative agencies." Ken Beitler, who had founded YES, became its first staff and helped provide small amounts of money for phone bills, rent, etc. In the early 1970's there was an emphasis on obtaining input from young people and having them serve on boards of directors. Other costs were born by having some of the mailings done by the U. of Minnesota Hospitals and the Minneapolis Clinic of Psychiatry and Neurology, and volunteers helped cover such costs themselves.

On another front, Community Mental Health, begun in the 1960's, had exploded nationally. The federal government was providing a good deal of money for the founding and expansion of community mental health centers around the country. This took many forms. There was the creation of suicide prevention lines, and eventually crisis centers. The Hennepin County Medical Center started a suicide prevention line under the leadership of psychologist Zigfrids Stelmachers in the late 1960's, and in 1971 opened a Crisis Intervention Center as an emergency room by-pass.

There was also an emphasis - both state and national - on the development and expansion of outpatient services, with a goal to closing down state hospitals for the mentally ill. Rapid progress was being made with the development of psychotropic medications which helped reduce needs for hospitalization.

Last but not least, there was an emphasis on involving the community in the provision of mental health services - in both the planning and in the actual service provision. Consultation, Education, & Training (CET) was a key component of the model and there was an emphasis on training indigenous "helpers" such as bartenders, hair dressers, clergy, and others. Hennepin County divided itself up into seven planning areas, each of which had a planning group, with the original goal of having each of these groups decide which services were needed by the residences of their neighborhoods. Public-private parternship, long a Minnesota ideal, was evident in the development of a community mental health program by the Metropolitan Medical Center, and of a Neighborhood Counseling Center by Abbott Northwestern Hospital.

The Early Counseling Program

When WICC was providing counseling services for TAMS clients, the clinic would be staffed by advanced graduate students in psychology and a mixture of university - based psychologists and many from the community. Volunteers were required to have had some training, but a wide range of people volunteered. There was no real team structure and supervision varied considerably. There was no attempt to apply any time limits to counseling.

One of the great challenges initially was to learn how to serve alienated young people. Among the new areas of skill and knowledge necessary was learning how to interview about drug use and abuse - something not taught in graduate school and something which was a new field of work for most. In addition, there was the reality that many of these kids were sexually active and that there were real issues around birth control, and also around pregnancy. Memos were generated and circulated on the handling of these issues and volunteers were required to attend a training session on the assessment of drug problems.

In the early days smoking marijuana and taking hallucinogens were the major issues. The impact of "bad trips" and the handling of "flashbacks" were common problems. Later the use of amphetamines, barbiturates, and eventually opiates became an issue. WICC volunteers learned a good deal more about such things than colleagues who had never worked with alienated young people.

One of the great challenges in serving young people was that it was not initially legal to do so without parental consent. This was changed by the Minnesota Legislature which passed laws enabling minors to consent to treatment under a number of circumstances. There was still considerable legal risk in assisting runaways, but fortunately the police and City Attorney believed that such help was important and allowed WICC and other agencies to function. There were some challenging situations, however, such as the night YES burned down in a fire and some runaways being harbored there showed up at WICC, followed soon afterwards by the police. Cool heads prevailed and the situation was sorted out down at the local precinct.

Consultation and Training

From the very beginning, WICC was conceptualized as a organization through which professionals could volunteer all types of psychological services to the community. At the very first Psychologists for Social Action meeting examples were given of organizations which might need help in program development, staff training, consultation on difficult cases, or even help in doing evaluation research. Having psychologists available to provide information to the news media and to give talks so as to education the public was also an early goal.

Psychologists Sam Scher, Bob Neal, John Brantner and psychology graduate student Gary Schoener were among those who gave talks in the community. Some volunteered at YES or in other programs and offered to help with training.

As new programs evolved, WICC volunteers began providing case consultation to paraprofessionals who found themselves over their heads with some difficult cases. Some of this evolved into WICC volunteers doing training in the handling of suicide, panic, anxiety, depression, etc.

It was not long before WICC began to provide organizational consultation - helping new programs develop policies, staff training, etc. In the case of a new drug abuse treatment program, Pharm House, WICC provided a full training program for volunteers on how to run support groups. WICC volunteers co-led some groups, and also helped process staff conflict as it arose. WICC was also the place where volunteers at some of these services would come for help when they needed therapy.

In the early 1970's WICC staff began encouraging the developing and expanding drug abuse treatment programs to work more collaboratively with each other, founding the Metropolitan Drug Assembly. In the same time period WICC staff were actively involved in the National Free Clinic Council's efforts to organize drug abuse treatment programs nationally, and to obtain some federal funds. This resulted in the development of the Metro Area Free Clinic Consortium which over the years has involved into a Community Health Care Coalition.

Getting Organized

Although there had been talk about incorporation starting back in 1969, for a variety of reasons, WICC didn't actually complete its incorporation until 1971. It was incorporated as a non-profit which is tax exempt under section 501 c (3) of the IRS Code. Its original incorporators were psychologists Marian Hall, Bob Neal, and Sam Scher. It was run by a Steering Committee, which then became a Board of Directors.

As was noted earlier, together with TAMS a grant request was submitted to the Governor's Crime Commission in 1970 asking for funding for research, and the provision of services, to alienated young people. The clientele were presented as delinquent or pre-delinquent. Funding was granted that spring and WICC hired its first staff: Nancy Pepinsky (now Nancy Rains) as Project Director, Mickey Maley as Coordinator, and Gary Schoener as half-time Community Coordinator. A Management Committee took over the coordinating and oversight functions as required by the grant, and the grant itself was administered through Minneapolis Children's which now had a structure (although the hospital had not yet been built). Pediatricians Betty Jerome and Arnold Anderson, some of the key people in the founding of TAMS, were actively involved.

Posters were developed, outreach was undertaken, and the clinic was organized. Research on attitudes towards sex and birth control was done in conjunction with TAMS, and for the first time systematic data was collected on WICC clients. WICC staff began to try to contact free clinics elsewhere in the country and shared ideas. Based on contact with the Los Angeles Free Clinic's counseling program, the concept of team supervision was developed and implemented at WICC. The supervisory role was further defined and became that of a team leader.

The grant was for two years - July 1971 - June 1973. David McCaffrey replaced Mickey Maley for the second year, and in 1972 planning began for the search for ongoing funding. In July 1972 Gary Schoener went from half time to full time. The United Way was not at that time funding any "alternative agencies" and it indicated that the application process would take two years. It was not encouraging. Foundation funding was applied for without success.

The Mental Health, Mental Retardation, & Inebriety Program of Hennepin County indicated some interest in contracting with WICC for both counseling and consultation, education, and training services. There had been pressure for the county to offer more community - based services, and purchasing them from WICC would be far less expensive than providing them directly. Furthermore, WICC was located in a community setting and had a good reputation. Although the state's fiscal year was June - July, the county was on a calendar year.

Both Nancy Pepinski and David McCaffrey announced their intentions to leave WICC for other positions, and the county granted WICC a half - year grant. While it would begin retroactive back to July 1, the money would not be received until later in the summer. Gary Schoener took over as Executive Director and kept the program going until new staff could be hired. The search for a new Coordinator of Consultation and training produced some fine applicants, and although it was decided to hire social worker Jeanette Milgrom for the position, it was also decided to hire psychologist Irving Benoist as Clinic Director. The Clinic Director position was upgraded from a paraprofessional one to a professional one. Both new staff began in Sept. of 1973.

The Clinic Director position was to be changed several times, from full time to half time back to 3/4 times. Its coordinating duties were combined with officer manager duties to create the position of Clinic & Administrative Coordinator. Martha Hughes, who had been hired in Nov. 1974 as Office Coordinator, took over this new position. She remained and still holds this position. Irving Benoist left and was replaced by psychologists John Gonsiorek, Robert Wiley, Ray Conroe, and Jim Ayers who holds the position today. It has not been a full time position for twenty years, largely because it is deemed advantageous for the Clinic Director to mainain some clinical practice on the side.

The Counseling Program Evolves

By the mid-1970's several changes had occurred in the WICC counseling program. First of all, after observing the team supervision model in use at the Los Angeles Free Clinic, Gary Schoener suggested that WICC adopt a similar model. This involved a supervision/consultation session following each clinic session. Secondly, the demand for WICC services during the day led to experimentation with some daytime hours. Eventually, a low client load on Friday evenings caused WICC to limit its evening services to Monday through Thursday evenings.

Daytime hours represented a new challenge in that finding volunteers who were free during the afternoons was not easy. This and the growth of WICC's consultation and training services caused WICC to develop an internship program. By the late 1970's psychology interns and social work field placement students were taken on half time. Since social work field placements typically required only 16 hours per week, social work students were asked to put in longer hours. However, psychology internships are typically full time, so that WICC interns need either to have another internship site simultaneously, or be in a program which enables them to stretch the internship out over two years.

Starting in the early 1970's, WICC's clientele had gradually shifted away from adolescents and had become older. Over time adolescents came to make up only a few percent of WICC's clients. Over the years WICC developed an operational definition of "alienated" to include those who would not have gone elsewhere for service or those who might have, but weren't sure where they would go.

Although in the early years referrals from TAMS and YES made up as much as 40% of the referrals, by the late 1970's WICC was receiving referrals from a myriad of sources.

Recognition

In 1972 the Nixon administration became interested in studying free clinics, hotlines, and walk-in centers since they had obviously had success in reaching out to alienated young people. The Office of Youth and Student Affairs of the Dept. of Health, Education, & Welfare picked four people to consult with the Secretary of HEW, Elliott Richardson, to discuss what had been learned. Two of the four were from Minnesota: Gary Schoener from WICC, Ken Beitler, the founder of YES. Unfortunately, Watergate was to undermine this effort when Elliot Richardson was shifted to the role of Attorney General, and eventually fired by Richard Nixon when he refused to fire Special Counsel Archibald Cox in the now famous "Saturday Night Massacre."

The United States Senate was also studying the problem of alienated young people through the Subcommittee on Children and Youth of the Committee on Labor which was chaired by Birch Bayh. Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota headed the subcommittee and it held hearings in Minnesota during 1972. WICC submitted a paper on walk-in counseling services which became part of the subcommittee report. Ken Beitler, Sister Marlene Barghini who founded the Bridge for Runaways, and many other Minnesotans played key roles in the hearings.

The Federal government was also quite interested in finding better solutions for the youth drug problem and Gary Schoener of the WICC staff provided input to the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention in the White House. He was also a consultant to the Drug Abuse Section of the U.S. Office of Education headed by Dr. Helen Nowlis.

In 1974 WICC received an award from the Center for Voluntary Action as a top volunteer program. In 1975 it was chosen as one of two counseling centers to be seen as a national model in a study done by the Joint Information Service (JIS) of the American Psychiatric Assn. and the National Assn. for Mental Health. This involved, among other things, a two day site visit by a team from the JIS, which involved observing counseling sessions and team functioning. In addition, WICC's Executive Director Gary Schoener was chosen to participate in a "think tank" in Washington, DC concerning the evolution of the "alternative services." All of this was memorialized in a book entitled The Alternative Services: Their Role in Mental Health (Glasscote et. al., 1975) which features a chapter on WICC.

In 1977, with the support of the Minnesota Psychiatric Society, WICC was nominated for and received the 1977 Gold Achievement Award in Hospital & Community Psychiatry from the American Psychiatric Association. No program in the state had been so - honored. WICC was written up in an article in the journal Hospital and Community Psychiatry and Gary Schoener traveled to San Francisco to accept the award on behalf of WICC.

During the 1970's and in the years that followed WICC has received many visitors from around the United States and abroad, and has also provided assistance to many around the world who are trying to start walk-in centers. WICC staff have received local, state, and national awards and recognition for professional accomplishments and contributions.

Some Emerging Community Issues

In the early 1970's WICC was involved in the development of a large number of emerging youth service agencies, providing support and consultation. Some, like YES, and the Bridge for Runaway Youth, grew and developed and survived. YES, WICC, and the Bridge for Runaways celebrated their 15^th anniversaries together in 1984. Since that time YES has merged with Contact Twin Cities and become the Crisis Connection.

Other youth serving agencies such as Storefront and Edina Youth Action, merged, and became Storefront/Youth Action. Some early crisis services like the hotline Pooneil Corner did not make it. Nor did a number of "drop-in centers" such as Anomie, sponsored by the YMCA, or Give and Take in St. Louis Park. Once the Minneapolis Children's Health Center was built in the early 1970's TAMS became an outpatient department, although still with some very distinctive features, including operation out of an old house next door to WICC.

At the same time a number of drug treatment programs were evolving. There was an early Methadone Maintenance Program at Mt. Sinai Hospital, close to WICC, which was part of an outpatient program called The Castle. Pharm House developed on the West Bank, and eventually opened a residential program in South Minneapolis. After some years the outpatient program closed, and only a residential program, now called Omegon, survived. Eden House, a more confrontive program aimed at hard core addicts, opened, and helped give birth to other programs. WICC assisted in training staff, providing consultation, helping with staff conflict resolution, and in organizing the Metropolitan Drug Assembly which attempted to mold the programs into a system. WICC still on occasion provides consultation and training to these programs.

WICC was also an integral part of planning efforts by the Metropolitan Health Board of the Metropolitan Council, with Gary Schoener serving on the Mental Health, Mental Retardation, and Inebriety Committee (MHMRI). WICC was also involved in the early planning efforts by Hennepin County which had an MHMRI division. The county was examining models of community mental health service provision, and WICC staff went along with county staff to site visit other models. In the late 1970's WICC was very involved in a study of what was termed "Post Crisis Care" by a committee of the Community Health and Welfare Council of the United Way. This planning unit no longer exists, but during the 1970's it played a key role in fostering community change. The report of this committee had a dramatic effect, partly because it was released at the same time as a consumer lawsuit (Vickerman et. al. vs. Hennepin Co., State of Minnesota, etc.). This lawsuit, which alleged a failure on the part of the county and state to provide alternatives to state hospital care, was settled through a consent decree through which Hennepin County overhauled its commitment process and also expanded its mental health system.

The Community Faces Sexuality Issues

While sexual issues of young people were important in the creation of TAMS, and while WICC was involved in addressing them, this was NOT to be the major issue of the 1970's. At the beginning of the 1970's homosexuality was considered a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and homosexual sexual acts were against the law. The Twin Cities had a fairly large gay and lesbian community and several struggling drop-in and referral programs - Gay House and the Lesbian Resource Center - provided some services. There was also a gay Alcoholics Anonymous group, the Maverick AA group, which for a time met at WICC.

Some political activism was in evidence. Jack Baker, an openly gay attorney, ran for public office, and was married to Mike McConnell. Jack eventually ended up on the United Way Board. There was an effort to expand the Minneapolis Civil Rights Ordinance to include protection for gays and WICC helped craft the language, which was quite unique, and became a national model.

WICC had been seeing gays and lesbians who were depressed after relationships had broken up, or who had other problems but were afraid to go to traditional helpers. A trial program of relationship counseling was set up, but WICC's major contribution as through providing both training and consultation to a group of seven counselors who were providing services through gay house. One of the group, Jim Frost, as part of his undergraduate studies, developed a program, and eventually space was donated by Abbott Northwestern Hospital. WICC arranged to provide clinical supervision, assisting in obtaining tax exempt status (the first of its type in the country), and eventually helped it work out an arrangement with Minneapolis Family & Children's Service to provide supervision.

Over time Gay Community Services, which took its name from an NIMH funded project headed by John Preston (later to become an editor and well known novelist) which published the "Gay People and Mental Health Newsletter." The program grew and expanded and eventually developed a social work field placement (also a first) and became a major service provider. Unfortunately, in the mid-1980's due to some bad decision - making it became insolvent and went out of business. During this time, Minneapolis Family & Children's Service and the Community - University Health Care Center developed major services for gays and lesbians. There were also a growing number of private practitioners providing service. By the end of the 1970's homosexuality was no longer considered a mental disorder.

Domestic Violence

Jeanette Milgrom joined the WICC staff in September of 1973 as Consultation Coordinator. She brought with her exceptionally broad training and experience in a wide range of areas of service provision. She had worked in Maxwell Jones' original therapeutic community in London and in a settlement house. She had worked in other parts of community mental health, and also in corrections, and had even been Assistant Warden of Shakopee Women's Correctional Facility. She had held most jobs only long enough to develop, or fax a program. She was to stay at WICC for more than 23 years, retiring in Dec. 1996, after nearly a quarter of a century of innovation.

One of her first targets was domestic violence, which at that time was just becoming known under the title of "battered women." She had provided some consultation to the first local program - Women's Advocates - which was coordinated by Sharon Vaughn in St. Paul. With the help of that program, she developed an evening workshop on the topic of "Battered Women." This attracted a reasonable crowd and it was ended with planning for a community response.

Out of this workshop and Jeanette's collaboration with Sharon Vaughan grew the Consortium on Battered Women. WICC provided staffing and support for several years as the Consortium grew and expanded. By the end of the 1970's there was a state program office and there were seven programs in the metropolitan area - probably the largest response per capita anywhere in the world. This effort continues today with programs growing and expanding. A Domestic Abuse Program, aimed at treating violent men and couples, was founded by former WICC intern Philip Oxman, a psychologist, and Mary Pat Brygger, a social worker from Minneapolis Family and Children's Service who had been involved in the Consortium.

While WICC still sees some domestic violence cases in the clinic, and also from time to time does some training or consultation, it has not been involved in the coordination of these efforts for many years. But this was by design. WICC attempts to help get things started and then moves on when others take over the effort. The staffing of the Consortium would have ended earlier if someone had been willing to do it.

Sexual Violence

While rape and other types of sexual violence were certainly more visible than domestic violence, in the early 1970's many blamed women victims for rape. There was considerable confusion about sexual violence, and in fact the focus of public discussion was often on the sex, rather than the violence. A fledgling Rape Counseling Center had begun, coordinated by Deborah Anderson, and WICC helped with some staff training. But it was clear that a broader community response was needed.

Jeanette decided, after talking with many of the players, that the best approach would be a full day workshop. This workshop would explore the issues of the victim, of emergency rooms, of the police, and of prosecutors. It would have two rape victims present their stories - something which had not been done before. In addition, WICC arranged the seating at round tables, and assigned seats so that rape victims sat next to police who sat next to social workers and nurses, etc.

The program went very well and the interaction which had been hoped for did occur. Bridges seemed to be built that we doubted could have been done through shuttle diplomacy between the various players. But, it remained to be seen whether the distrust and previously large gulfs between the key players would be fixed. WICC waited and watched, and then after two months did a followup study.

The results were very gratifying. A number of participants had invited other participants to do agency inservices. The Hennepin County Attorney developed an advocacy group within their office to assist rape victims, and hired one of the victims, Deborah Anderson, to head it up. (She later went on to do consulting and to work with the Illusion Theater in developing programs about sexual violence.) Twin cities hospitals with emergency rooms all developed improved procedures which were victim-friendly and also helpful to the police. Within several years rates of prosecution and conviction skyrocketed.

In 1976 the problem of child sexual abuse was still relatively new. The reporting of child abuse dated only from 1972, and through most of the century the concern with children had been more neglect than abuse. Incest was a taboo topic. WICC decided to sponsor a workshop on child sexual abuse and incest in the Fall of 1976 and while it was reasonably well attended and fostered some good discussion, it was not followed by program innovation or community response. Many felt that the time was not yet right, although at a later date, in the 1980's, there was broad community discussion. Unfortunately, the success of the two previous workshops was not matched, although WICC's early effort helped begin the process of examination of these issues in the broader community.

Sexual Misconduct By Professionals

WICC had always seen some clients who had complaints about therapy or counseling received elsewhere. On a few occasions the complaints involved sexual misconduct by professionals. In 1974 a person in the community approached WICC about assisting a woman who had been sexually exploited by a prominent psychiatrist about whom WICC had heard other complaints. WICC assisted this client in filing a complaint with the board with licensed physicians -- the Board of Medical Examiners. Until that time there had been few prosecutions of therapists by Boards.

In this case prominent citizens and nationally-known professionals such as Dr. Virginia Satir came forward to defend the psychiatrist in question, and he ended up with a minor penalty, which he appealed. During the appeals process the media followed the story and the appellate court judge made it clear that a significant penalty would have been justified. WICC developed a reputation for assisting people in bringing complaints, and in 1976 Jeanette Milgrom, and WICC volunteer Donna Witthaus, ran what is believed to be the first support group in history for victims of therapist abuse.

To recapture the time period, it is useful to remember that one social worker, upon receiving the notice of the group, believed that there was no group but that this ws a "clever way to send a message to the professional community." He could not believe that we had enough women for a group. After the success of that first group, a second one was run, and then WICC decided to try to get another agency to take over this work.

WICC approached Minneapolis Family & Children's service and met with Ellen Luepker, the social worker who coordinated their groups. She was intrigued with this issue and decided to co-lead the first group with another worker, Carol Retsch-Bogard. This group was successful and many more followed. Eventually Ellen left the agency and went into private practice, and continued the groups with co-leaders who are WICC interns. Jeanette served as a consultant and this provided both a key learning experience for psychology and social work interns and an important community service. The history of these groups is recounted in our book Psychotherapists' Sexual Involvement With Clients: Intervention and Prevention.

Over the years which followed both Ellen and Jeanette have taught many others our group model, and Ellen has developed it still further. Unlike most approaches to victim groups, this one is a short-term one - with 10 - 12 sessions. Ellen has recently completed a largescale followup study of women who had been treated in her groups.

By 1979 WICC staff had also developed a Checklist of Administrative Safeguards to Limit the Risk of Sexual Misconduct and had also pioneered the Processing Session - a meeting between the complainant and the alleged offender. These are all discussed in the book.

Then, in the early 1980's, WICC was asked to undertake assessments of professionals who had engaged in sexual contact with clients and determine if rehabilitation was possible. This work is still a key service offered by WICC, and the Gonsiorek/Schoener model developed is widely used. The reader is referred to the paper Assessment and Rehabilitation of Professionals Who Have Engaged in Boundary Violations which can be found on this web site.

Minnesota Responds

Political activist Peggy Spector authored a paper in 1984 which attempted to translate WICC's experience with sexual misconduct by professionals into public policy options. She then successfully lobbied for the creation of a legislative Task Force on Sexual Exploitation by Counselors and Psychotherapists. Begun in the Fall of 1984, by the spring of 1985 the Task Force had issued a legislative report recommending the criminalization of therapist-client sex, and a bill was created and passed. Thus Minnesota followed Wisconsin and became the second state state to create a criminal law of this type. Minnesota was the first state to create a felony statute, and the first to include clergy. (Within two years Wisconsin followed suit.)

In 1986 a civil statute was passed in Minnesota which, among other things, required employers to do background checks including specific questions about sexual misconduct. An employer who failed to provide such information when it was requested might be liable for future damages. This statute was based on WICC's experience that in many instances repeat offenders were able to go job to job with silence agreements (done in exchange for a resignation) covering their past misdeeds. The legislators were shocked by this information and asked how this practice could be stopped. WICC staff indicated that the employer of an offending practitioner needed to be more concerned about harm to future clients or parishioners than about the practitioner suing the former employer for revealing the history. Case law (e.g. Moses [Tenantry] v. Diocese of Colorado 863 P.2d 310 [Colorado 1993]) eventually caused insurance companies to demand that these things no longer be hidden.

Eventually the work of the Task Force on Sexual Exploitation by Counselors and Psychotherapists was published by the State of Minnesota in a book entitled It's Never O.K. edited by Barbara Sanderson. A national conference of the same title was held in 1988, attracting more than 250 people from 35 states to Minneapolis for an in-depth review of the problem of sexual misconduct by professionals. WICC co-sponsored the conference and WICC staff had extensive involvement in the task force, and authored sections of the report. WICC staff also partcipated in state-wide training efforts, sponsored by the Dept. of Corrections, aimed at training professionals, law enforcement, and advocates as to how to assist victims.

The Minnesota laws and approach to this problem have been used as a model internationally.

Professional Boundaries

Early in the work on professional sexual misconduct, WICC staff began to view the problem in the context of a larger issue - professional boundaries. In the 1980's Jeanette Milgrom developed a model for a two hour agency inservice on professional boundaries. A great many of these were done and the model evolved, and eventually was described in a manual authored by Jeanette and published by WICC in 1992: Boundaries in Professional Relationships: A Training Guide. (See information on the web site about ordering this publication.) The manual has been used around the world and has influenced many who train in this area. WICC still offers these two hour inservices to a wide range of agencies and programs, although ghe model has evolved still further.

WICC also began offering half day and full day training programs, often sponsored by other organizations, on "Professional Boundaries and Risk Management." (An example can be found on this web site.) These utilized the exercises developed by Jeanette, and also other exercises, videotaped vignettes, etc.

These often include a discussion of privacy, confidentiality, mandatory reporting, and other ethical and legal duties. Examples of handouts can be found on this web site.

The Training of Supervision

In the clinic the WICC supervision model involves the supervisor serving as a team leader and facilitating discussion of all client visits. The supervisor has the last word only in situations deemed to be life-threatening, and the supervisor's own work is supervised by the team.

Although the fields of psychology and social work - from which WICC draws its volunteers - rely heavily on supervised experience as a method of training and credentialing, historically there has been little or no direct training of supervision skills.

In the early 1980's it was decided that it would be an important service for WICC to offer supervision training, and also that this would be a way of bringing experienced clinicians into the role of supervisor. Clinic Director Bob Wiley, Ph.D., developed a supervision training program involving didactic training, discussion groups, and an apprenticeship as an assistant supervisor. The program lasted 9 months and those who completed it received a certificate.

The program has been continued under successive Clinic Directors although it is not run every year and the use of certificates has not been continued. In recent years WICC Clinic Director Jim Ayers has done workshops on supervision in the broader community, and WICC has developed some half day, and full day training seminars on supervision issues. In 1998 WICC provided a full day of training on supervision for the trainees and supervisors in local APA approved internship programs.

Short Term Therapy

WICC has always provided brief, or short-term therapy. The basic model involved removing entry barriers so that people would come for help earlier, so that shorter term interventions might be effective. By removing the "red tape" of intakes, the focus has always been to get down to business and begin counseling the first session.

In the era when WICC was founded, the end of the 1960's, short term therapy was a new concept. In fact, crisis intervention was, to some degree, a relatively new idea. There were those that argued that brief therapies short-changed the client, and that only longer term therapy represented a reasonable approach to therapy. WICC staff periodically provided workshops or inservice training in short-term therapy to a variety of groups and programs.

WICC staff lectured in various professional training programs on the topic of short-term therapy and in the early 1980's began teaching a course in crisis and short-term therapy as part of the Clinical Psychology Training Program at the University of Minnesota. This involved didactic sessions and supervised experience on WICC counseling teams.

Ray Conroe, Ph.D., further developed this course, and after his departure from the WICC paid staff, generously continued to help with the teaching as a volunteer. Psychologist Gary Fishler, Ph.D., also helped teach this course for a number of years, and it has been continued under current Clinic Director Jim Ayers, Ph.D. The University of Minnesota began paying WICC to teach this core course in the mid-1990's. The course is helpful to those in training and also at times provides a way of bringing new counselors to WICC.

Internships and Practicums

As was noted earlier, to help staff daytime hours, and to extend WICC's consultation & training work, WICC began half-time psychology internships and a social work field placement in the late 1970's. Typically there is one intern from each field, and they are at WICC for at least 9 months on a half-time basis. Some work over the summer. The training involves principally short-term therapy, but also includes some longer term work. In addition, interns develop skills and experience in consultation and training.

Starting in the late 1980's WICC began offering practicums to select students. In many instances these were graduate students who had volunteered at WICC. These typically involve service on two counseling teams and then working with some clients on a referral basis. The focus is short term therapy.

A current reality in our community, as is the case elsewhere in the United States, is the reality that internship positions and social work field work positions are fewer and fewer and there are graduate students who are unable to find training placements.

The 1990's and Beyond

WICC turned 25 in 1994 and a major reunion and celebration were held. By this time thousands of mental health professionals and others had volunteered their time over the years. Still others had served on the WICC Board of Directors.

Beginning in the 1980's, Hennepin County's Mental Health Division was no longer providing contracted agencies with yearly increases to match inflation. WICC and other mental health programs had to find more outside funding, and WICC did this by selling consultation & training services, selling the book and manual, and by approaching its volunteers for donations.

In Hennepin County, and in fact, in the State of Minnesota, the role of government in providing mental health services was changing dramatically. Private health plans were covering a good deal of Medicaid services and the notion of government as a provider of community mental health services was being challenged. It had become clear that community mental health as it had been known for the past 30 years was going to decline.

Over the years volunteers have been very generous with both their time and their donations. WICC has also been able to sell more and more consultation and training services. In 1996 and 1997 WICC and other community programs suffered budget cuts. WICC was able to keep operating by reducing one staff position from full time to 80%,and then 50% time. In addition, WICC had to stop paying interns. Finally, WICC raised more outside income. There were no additional cuts in 1998 and the funding was, at least for a time, stable. However, WICC had to redo its strategic plan and develop an aggressive plan to raise more income.

The Millenium and Beyond

WICC is firmly committed to the concept with which it began its work nearly 30 years ago - that mental health services should be readily available to everyone, and that they should be accessible so that people come for help before problems are out of control. Secondly, it is committed to the concept that professionals can play a key role in helping others provide services in a more effective way through consultation and training.

It is expected that for WICC to be able to continue its services it will need to find more and more funding from non-public sources. Most of this will have to involve the sale of services.

WICC purchased the facility out of which it operates back in the late 1970's and has periodically rennovated it. The neighborhood around WICC has undergone a great deal of change. Abbott-Northwestern Hospital, Children's Hospital, and the Phillips Eye Institute have grown and expanded. In addition, the headquarters of the Allina Health System are now only five blocks for WICC at Chicago Avenue and Lake Street. Chicago Crossings, a large condo development, now sits next to WICC on its north side. In fact, WICC is now in a zone which the State has classified as a "medical corridor."

Another important change is the rapidly expanding diversity of the City of Minneapolis. Refugees from Europe, Africa, and Asia are arriving and many are choosing to live in the neighborhood around WICC. This has brought great challenges for the service system to be able to respond and provide assistance where it is needed. WICC has also developed a working relationship with the Center for Victims of Torture to help with their ever-increasing caseload of refugees who have been tortured in their homelands.