The Refugee Center for Healing Torture Trauma

About Bethany Christian Services

  • Founded in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1944
  • Ministers in more than 80 offices in over 30 states and serves children and families in more than a dozen other countries
  • Bethany’s office in Kent County (Grand Rapids)
    - Provides services to more than 7,000 children and families annually
    - Offers the following services: foster care, adoption, mental health and traumatic-stress treatment, home-based counseling, pregnancy counseling services, residential care, and refugee/immigrant resettlement services.

Refugee Services
  • Bethany’s Grand Rapids office has more than 30 years of experience providing culturally and linguistically appropriate services to refugee and immigrant populations dating back to the fall of Saigon in 1975.
  • Bethany’s West Michigan offices have become the largest “Unaccompanied Minor Program” in the United States.
  • In 2008, Bethany provided case management and counseling services to 230 children and youth from Burma, Sudan, Iran, China, and Central America who were placed in 112 homes.
  • Bethany provides comprehensive programs in Kent County for adult refugee and immigrant resettlement, acculturation, mental health counseling, case management, advocacy, and education.
  • In fiscal year 2008, Bethany’s adult refugee programs (“Refugee Outreach and Referral Services” and “Refugee Mental Health Services”) provided services to 240 refugees and immigrants.
  • Bethany’s services to immigrants are currently being delivered to adults and families from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Liberia, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Burundi, Zaire, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Cuba, China, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, countries of the former Soviet Union, and countries of Central America.

Refugee Center for Healing Torture Trauma
  • This center combines all of the above expertise in working with refugee and immigrant victims of torture.
  • Bethany provides culturally competent refugee services.
  • The treatment is trauma-focused, utilizing Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Treatment (TF-CBT) protocol.
  • Treatment plans are client- and family-centered.
  • Interventions match the client’s current Stage of Change and utilize Motivational Interviewing techniques to help clients work through the Stages of Change.