Meet RAMS - Asian Family Institute Fee-for-service Program

The RAMS Asian Family Institute (AFI) has updated information regarding our Fee-for-service program offerings.

The services we offer include Testing & Evaluation, Psychotherapy, and Psychiatric services for both adults and children. Click HERE for our program brochure and more details on each of these culturally competent services.

Other services also available at AFI include the Problem Gambling Project (a collaboration with NICOS) and the CalWorks project (a collaboration with Westside Community Services.

The AFI multi-disciplinary staff team includes the fields of psychiatry, psychology, marriage & family therapy, clinical social work, and psychiatric nursing with diverse cultural backgrounds and experience in helping clients deal with a wide range of issues. The staff include bilingual and bicultural professionals who can provide services in Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Cambodian, Tagalog, and Russian.

To schedule an appointment or to receive more information, please call our intake coordinator at (415) 668-5998 ext 21. Your information will be kept CONFIDENTIAL, as required by law.

RAMS co-presenting at the 2012 SFIAAFF: Himalayan Youth Voices Project

RAMS is again proud to be a community co-presenter at the 30th Annual San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. The festival features over 100 films from America and around the world. This year, RAMS shall be co-presenting HIMALAYAN YOUTH VOICES PROJECT on Saturday March 10 at 1:15 pm.

From the CAAM website:

With funding from the Asian Pacific Fund and the Comcast Foundation, we collaborated with the grassroots organization Sahayeta at the first Himalayan Youth Summit in Oakland, connecting with youth from those three national backgrounds for an intensive media training workshop. From there, the Himalayan Youth Voices Project was born. The project was created and organized by Sapana Sakya, Public Media Director at CAAM.

The Project’s goal is to engage a growing but often invisible segment of the Asian American community in the Bay Area, and to give its youth access to the tools that enable them to tell their own stories. The youth participated in a ten-week workshop with CAAM and the youth media experts at TILT (Teaching Intermedia Literacy Tools).  The youth participants were introduced to both professional production skills and the media literacy skills necessary to navigate today’s digital reality.

RAMS is also honored to have been the recipient of grants awarded by the Asian Pacific Fund, and to be co-presenting this special film.

Integrated Care for Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Communities: A Blueprint for Action

RAMS is excited to be able to share with our community the official copy of the Integrated Care for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders Communities: A Blueprint for Action: Consensus Statement and Recommendations.  This document truly represents a group effort, which RAMS was delighted to be a part of, and the Blueprint reflects years of dedication by so many individuals & organizations who have given to improving the quality of care for our communities.  The document was published, in January 2012, by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health, and authored by DJ Ida, Ph.D., Janet SooHoo, MSW, and Teresa Chapa, Ph.D., MPA.  It was an honor for RAMS to be invited to participate in this process.  In addition, several staff from RAMS assisted & volunteered at the expert consensus meeting & summit that was held in San Francisco, hosted by National Asian American Pacific Islander Mental Health Association.  Please feel free to distribute this document so we can all build on the recommendations, educate stakeholders/providers/decision makers, and take action!

Click HERE to read the document online.

NOW ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS for the Peer Specialist Certificate Program

RAMS, in collaboration with San Francisco State University, is pleased & very excited to announce the start of Peer Specialist Mental Health Certificate program for the Spring 2012. The Brochure, Application, and Open House information is posted on the RAMS website (click HERE).

We are accepting applications through March 2, 2012, at 5:00pm.

About the Program: Richmond Area Multi-Services, Inc. and San Francisco State University Department of Counseling jointly developed and are offering the Peer Specialist Mental Health Certificate Program. Funded by the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA), the primary goal of the Certificate program is to prepare consumers of community behavioral health services or family members with the basic skills and knowledge for entry-level peer specialist/counseling roles in the community behavioral health system or to further their career in the field.

For more information, you can also contact Christine Tam, Program Coordinator, with any questions at christinehtam@ramsinc.org or by phone (415) 668-5955 x386.  You can also join us at our Open House - click on the flyer above for more details.

We look forward to the Spring 2012 class in April and continue training the next generation of Peer Specialists/Counselors.

Fu Yau Project Winter Newsletter

Check out the latest Fu Yau Times, a semi-annual newsletter with great articles and tips on parenting and resources for the community. Check it out by clicking HERE.

About the Fu Yau Project:

The Fu Yau Project is one of the many Child, Youth & Family Services offered at RAMS. It is a collaboration of RAMS and Chinatown Child Development Center (CCDC) and is located at 720 Sacramento Street, in San Francisco's Chinatown district. This innovative program provides prevention and early intervention mental health services to the childcare community that cares for children, ages 0-5 years old. Services includes the following: On-Site Program and Child Observation; Clinical Consultation with childcare staff and families; On-Site Intervention with individual and groups of children; Parenting Classes and Support Groups; and In-Service Training for the childcare staff relating to child development and mental health related issues. The Fu Yau Project staff includes child psychiatrists, licensed and license-tracked clinical psychologists, clinical social workers, and marriage and family therapists, all of whom reflect the unique language skills and cultural competence needed to provide services for the children, families, and teaching staff of the childcare programs.

Through the Fu Yau Project, RAMS currently provides services at more than 43 childcare centers, eight family childcare providers, five family resource centers, and one after school site, which are located in over nine San Francisco neighborhoods.

Graduation Day - Peer Specialist Mental Health Certificate Program Fall 2011

We are so excited to announce the graduation of the Fall 2011 Cohort of the Peer Specialist Mental Health Certificate Program on Thursday, December 8th, 2011. This is the third graduating cohort of the program. Friends, family, and members of the behavioral health community gathered on that day to support and celebrate this special occasion with our graduates at the San Francisco State University downtown campus.

Kavoos Bassiri, RAMS CEO, along with Dr. Rob Williams, Chair of the Counseling Department at San Francisco State University, Dr. Mya Vaughn, Assistant Professor at San Francisco State University, and Christine Tam, Program Coordinator, conducted the ceremony to recognize the hard work, dedication, and commitment of the graduates that led them to successfully complete the program.

Throughout the past 12 weeks, students went through an intensive training that taught them the skills and knowledge of being a peer counselor in the field of community behavioral health. They devoted themselves to attending eight hours of lectures each week on topics related to counseling individuals with mental health conditions and/or substance use related issues. In addition to attending class regularly, the program demanded students to spend time outside of class to review lecture materials, complete reading assignments, and work on class projects. Many of the graduates from this cohort faced personal challenges outside of the course throughout these 12 weeks, yet, they continued their hard work and dedication in spite of these challenges to meet the demands the program. Their resilience and ability stay committed are highly commendable.

At this time, graduates are looking for opportunities to continue their pursuit in the field of community behavioral health. Several of them have already expressed interest in further education in the field while others have started the process of looking for employment and internship opportunities. We look forward to hearing from them as they continue to develop professionally. We anticipate hearing many future contributions to the community by this graduating class. .

The next cohort for the Peer Specialist Mental Health Certificate Program will begin in April 2012. Details about how to apply for the next cohort will become available in January 2012. Please contact Program Coordinator, Christine Tam at (415) 668 – 5955 x386 or christinehtam@ramsinc.org for additional information.

Youth Council Fall 2011

In September of this year, Youth Council reconvened with vigor and new faces. This year’s Youth Council has 9 youth attendees and two RAMS staff advisors who meet once a month to discuss mental health services and issues pertinent to the adolescent and young adult population. The opinions and perspectives of youth participants are gathered to better address the delivery service within RAMS and the larger CBHS system. Over the past months, we have screened clips from the documentary, “Race to Nowhere” (2009), discussed the academic pressures that our teens face and explored tips for self-care and connecting teens to mental health services. Sai-Ling Chan-Sew, LCSW, RAMS Clinical Supervisor/Consultant and also former Director of the Child, Youth and Family System-of-Care, Community Behavioral Health Services, visited and joined our discussion regarding stress management.

In 2012, the Youth Council will be accepting new members who have an interest in participating in this program. If you know of a youth who would be a good fit, please contact Nira Singh, PsyD. or Stephanie Chen, Ph.D. at (415) 668-5955 for more information. For a sneak peek--topics of the new year will include teen-friendly recruitment and outreach strategies as Summer Bridge will start gearing up for their third year.