A new Counseling, Recovery and Wellness (CReW) office is bringing renewed hope and expanded mental health and substance use support to people in south King County. The new space allows CReW to serve more people, provide greater access to care, and offer a calming, welcoming environment for those on their journey toward healing.
CReW: Meeting People Where They Are
Catholic Community Services’ (CCS) CReW program is an outpatient counseling program offering mental health and substance use treatment to Medicaid-enrolled adults. Through CReW, clients can access counseling services, medication management, case management, assessment, and group therapy.
For the people with lower incomes served by CReW, traditional outpatient counseling is often not the right fit. Connecting with services and attending regular, in-person sessions can be challenging for those who lack stability in their lives. To meet clients where they are at, CReW emphasizes outreach, collaborating with other CCS programs to identify and connect with people who might benefit from CReW services.
“We do a lot of outreach, and behavioral health programs traditionally don’t do outreach,” says Julie Goodman, CReW division director. “That makes us really unique.”
The CReW program initially opened a south King County hub in 2022 to address the need other CCS programs observed in the area. The south King County hub started with just 3 behavioral health clinicians, but they now have 10 staff members, including mental health professionals, case managers, a registered nurse, and an advanced registered nurse practitioner. Since opening just a few years ago, CReW South King County has grown to a program that served more than 200 clients last year. With this new office space, the program expects that number will only continue to rise.
More Access, More Impact
When clients walk through the doors of this new office, they’ll be greeted by a cheerful painting of a rainbow next to the front desk. Before moving into this office, CReW South King County used the Federal Way and Kent day centers as their home bases. While these locations enabled CReW to quickly expand services in the area, CReW service providers shared office space with the other programs that operate out of the day center.
“This new office is such a calming space — it has a different feel to it,” Julie says. “This space is a great fit for folks that have a little bit more stability and maybe the day center environments are not the right environment.”
The new CReW office includes a conference room, 3 private meeting spaces, a telehealth meeting space, supervisor office, and a dedicated prescriber space. With the new office designated to CReW, providers will now have more availability to meet with clients, ultimately meaning that more clients will receive CReW services.
“We’ve seen more folks get enrolled and be able to get in more quickly,” Julie says. “We’ve always had a lot of referrals, but we haven’t always been able to get folks in quickly. We definitely have the ability to serve more folks now.”
This new CReW office in south King County reflects CCS’s commitment to meeting the urgent needs of our neighbors who are too often overlooked. It’s about more than clinical care — it’s about restoring dignity, creating access, and walking alongside people on their journey to a better life.