Children at Risk & Their Families: Healing Together
Specialized mental health care for children facing significant emotional and behavioral challenges, and the families walking alongside them.
When a child is struggling, the whole family is struggling.
Children at risk often carry the weight of early trauma, loss, instability, or unmet needs, and the behaviors that follow can leave families feeling exhausted, isolated, and unsure where to turn.
At TESS, we believe these are good kids who need support, understanding, and healing. We provide specialized mental health services for children at risk and their families, grounded in trauma-informed care and decades of expertise in childhood attachment, behavioral health, and family systems.
The TESS Approach
Our founder, Helene Timpone, LCSW, has spent her career working with the children and families that other systems have struggled to help.
Children with significant behaviors, complex diagnoses, histories of trauma, and families at the breaking point. That clinical depth lives at the heart of how TESS works with every family we serve.
We start with the understanding that behavior is communication. When a child becomes aggressive, withdrawn, defiant, or unable to function at home or school, those behaviors are usually a signal that something underneath needs attention. Our therapists are trained to look beneath the surface, identify the trauma or unmet need driving the behavior, and create a treatment plan that addresses both the child and the family system around them.
Treatment is collaborative and personalized. We blend evidence-based modalities, including EMDR, attachment-based therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, somatic approaches, and play-based interventions, with intensive parent coaching and family therapy. For families navigating the most acute behaviors, we offer wraparound-style coordination that brings the whole care team into alignment around your child's needs.
We also recognize that parents and caregivers cannot pour from an empty cup. Our work always includes the adults in the family, helping you understand your child's brain, regulate your own nervous system, and rebuild the connection that makes healing possible.
OUR SERVICES
Who We Serve
Our specialty in children at risk includes work with:
✔ Adoptive & Foster Families
Children with histories of pre-adoption trauma, attachment wounds, multiple placements, or significant behavioral challenges.
✔ Children with Complex Diagnoses
Young people with co-occurring trauma, mood, anxiety, attachment, or behavioral conditions who have not responded fully to prior treatment.
✔ Children Facing Placement Disruption
Families at risk of separation, considering higher levels of care, or working to bring a child home from residential treatment.
✔ Families in Crisis
Households facing escalating behaviors, school refusal, safety concerns, or breakdown of the family system.
✔ Kinship Caregivers
Grandparents, relatives, and other family members raising children impacted by trauma, loss, or family instability.
✔ Caregivers Carrying Their Own Trauma
Parents and guardians whose own histories shape how they show up for their children.
How We Help Children at Risk & Their Families
✔ Stabilize the Home
Reduce daily crisis, lower the intensity of behaviors, and rebuild a sense of safety in the family.
✔ Strengthen the Family
Repair ruptures, rebuild attachment, and equip parents with practical tools that work in real life.
✔ Understand the Why
Help caregivers see the trauma, fear, and unmet needs underneath difficult behaviors so they can respond with confidence.
✔ Support the Caregivers
Offer individual therapy, coaching, and community for the adults doing the hardest work of all.
✔ Heal the Child
Provide developmentally appropriate, trauma-informed therapy that supports lasting change rather than short-term symptom management.
✔ Connect to the Right Resources
Help families navigate schools, providers, and systems so the right supports are in place.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Many of the families we serve have tried multiple providers without lasting change. Our approach is specifically designed for children whose behaviors are rooted in trauma and attachment disruption, not just symptoms to manage. We treat the underlying causes, work with the whole family, and bring decades of specialized expertise in complex cases.
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Yes, please reach out. We frequently work with families considering higher levels of care, families whose children are currently placed outside the home, and families working toward reunification. The earlier we can connect, the more options you typically have.
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Yes. This is a deep specialty for our team. We understand pre-adoption trauma, attachment disruption, the impact of multiple placements, and the unique challenges adoptive and foster caregivers carry. You will not need to explain the basics; we already understand.
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No. Trauma treatment with children does not require detailed verbal recounting. We use developmentally appropriate, body-based, and expressive approaches that allow healing without re-traumatization. Children can process what happened in ways that match their age and readiness.
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Highly involved. Parents and caregivers are essential to a child's healing. We will work with you directly through coaching, parent sessions, and family work, and we will help you build the knowledge and tools that turn your home into the healing environment your child needs.
Ready to Help Your Family Find Solid Ground?
You do not have to navigate this alone. We are here when you are ready.