Making a Splash into the School Year: How Joy, Connection, and Family-Centered Care Shape Healing on Our Oakland Campus
- Fred Finch
- Oct 8
- 2 min read
Last month, our Oakland campus came alive with laughter, splashes, and smiles as we celebrated the start of the new school year with a Back-to-School Celebration. Youth from our Avalon and New Yosemite residential programs, along with students from our Nonpublic School (NPS), joined with staff for a day of fun, food, and connection.
While the day featured a giant inflatable water slide, face painting, and a delicious BBQ, the event represented something much deeper than just fun in the sun—it was an intentional part of the therapeutic process.
At Fred Finch, our residential programs in both Oakland and San Diego provide intensive treatment and support for youth ages 12 to 18 who are navigating complex emotional, behavioral, and developmental challenges.
Avalon, our Short-Term Therapeutic Residential Program (STRTP), serves adolescents who are dually diagnosed with mental illness, emotional difficulties, and developmental disabilities and/or autism. Youth live on campus for a longer-term stay focused on stabilization, growth, and family reunification.
Yosemite residential is our Crisis Stabilization and Assessment Program, a short-term (typically 90-day) program designed to help youth and families in crisis. The program provides in-depth assessments and discharge planning to ensure each youth can return home with the right community-based supports in place.
As Mar Smith, Senior Director of Residential Programs in Northern California, explains:
“You can’t heal a child in isolation from their family. We’re only the parentheses in a kid’s life. They have a whole history before and after their time with us, and our job is to help them and their families find new ways to connect and sustain the progress they make here.”
This philosophy is at the heart of everything that happens on our Oakland campus and residential programs. Family involvement is woven throughout treatment—from regular family therapy sessions to support groups and special family-inclusive events.
As Mar adds,
“Therapy is hard work. Working through your stuff with your kid or your parent is exhausting. That’s why we also make space for fun—events like our Back-to-School Celebration, Spring Fling, or Thanksgiving Feast give youth and families a chance to laugh, relax, and let their guard down in between the hard work of therapy.”
For the youth in our care, these moments of joy and connection can be deeply healing. Every smile, splash, or shared meal represents progress toward trust, safety, and belonging. And behind the scenes, our dedicated teams—residential youth counselors, licensed clinicians, and behavioral analysts—make these moments possible through their consistency, compassion, and care.
Their daily work builds the foundation for the laughter we saw that day. The trust, structure, and relational safety they create allow youth to experience what healing feels like—both in therapy and in everyday life.
As we move into the school year and prepare for our next campus event—the Fall Festival—we carry forward this reminder: healing doesn’t happen only in classrooms or therapy sessions. It also unfolds in the joyful, human moments of connection, courage, and community that give our youth the confidence to thrive long after they leave our care.
