Our Story
The Story of Cornerstone Herkimer, LLC’s Mobile Counseling Services
Evolution, innovation, and implementation are concepts that navigate the story of mobile counseling in New York State. Mental health services have long been provided in private practices, community centers, schools, agencies, medical offices, and various types of traditional clinical environments. As time progressed, so did technology and society’s ways of managing the information, help, and guidance necessary to maintain emotional and mental stability.
In 2007, Director & Founder Ward Halverson, LCSW-R, M.Ed. returned home from combat as a company commander with the 25th Infantry Division in Afghanistan, to open a private practice. He specialized in child and family therapy and the management of defiant children. Ward began to recognize a need to connect services to individuals and families more directly and effectively. He began the design of a delivery model for counseling services that was sustainable, scalable, and specific to homes, which could provide meaningful treatment to more individuals and families at a faster pace. A hub was needed to connect those in need with immediate help and support, to coordinate a distributed network of licensed mental health providers.
In November of 2016, Cornerstone Herkimer opened as a limited liability company in the village of Herkimer, New York. With the knowledge and support of colleagues in the field, social workers, and powerful insurance carriers like Fidelis Care, by May of 2017 Ward and his team finished conceptualizing a novel approach to provide mental health services in Upstate New York. Mobile counseling as a new option was created. They were on the cusp of innovation, re-engineering the delivery model of mental health services to meet modern society’s growing need for urgent help and support, with built-in flexibility and the ability to grow within a family system. Clinicians were needed who were comfortable with autonomy and committed to the community in which they lived, could flex their schedules, and shared a desire to implement a new kind of hybrid counseling model. Providers could pick and choose modalities: in-home, in the community, local office, telehealth, or any combination best suited to a family seeking services. The team networked and recruited to turn this concept - initially an idea discussed among colleagues - into a reality.
In January of 2019, Cornerstone began to rapidly expand their eclectic delivery model of services across Upstate New York, into nine major regions stretching over more than 30 New York counties and closely affiliated with three other parallel mobile counseling companies. The worldwide pandemic led to even-faster growth. More than ever, communities needed the flexibility of this new hybrid model. By the end of 2020, mobile counseling had grown to a network of over 300 clinicians serving communities across all of New York State, excepting New York City and Long Island. The vision had become a reality.
Mental health treatment in the Upstate New York region
About Cornerstone
We are a network of energetic, highly qualified licensed counselors that span across Central New York. We share a common pride in what we do and our commitment to providing excellent service to area individuals and families.
Many families across Central New York struggle with the opioid epidemic, addiction, systemic poverty, patterns of under-employment, chronic domestic violence, difficulty finding stable employment, and lack of affordable housing.
More and more area residents are at risk of family conflict, extended hopelessness, unnecessary anxiety, homelessness, or worse. Meanwhile, traditional agencies and practices designed to address these problems are often overwhelmed, underfunded, and unable to adapt – employing last century’s solutions to this century’s problems, an unworkable solution.
We are a local group of licensed social workers using a transformative approach to mental health treatment: to expand and reshape the delivery model, based on 21st-century-specific needs. We plan to aid in eliminating cyclical poverty through wrap-around encapsulation, an integrated community approach, mobile staff using texting and technology. We are focused on wellness-based preventative thinking, connectivity, and immediacy.
Current Mental Health Treatment in America
Mental health treatment in America – and the Upstate New York region – has improved dramatically in the last century, but there’s still huge room for change in the century before us:
- 1/5 of our local population has a mental illness on any given day. Approximately 5% are essentially unable to function.
- 1 in 10 adults and children experience mental health challenges serious enough to affect their ability to function in work, family and school life.
- In New York, the disease burden of mental illness exceeds that caused by all cancers.
- People enter care 9 years after their problems – which are highly preventable – first appear, and half of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 14.
- 60% of our population with mental health diagnoses do not receive treatment.
- Mental disorders that appear early on, left untreated, are associated with permanent disability, school failure, teenage childbearing, unstable employment, marital instability, violence, and death by suicide.
Our Mission
The mission of Cornerstone is to support, enrich, and guide individuals and families as they undertake major life changes by delivering caring, person-centered evidence-based professional case management, medical services, and clinical solutions to those in the greater community.
Our Vision
Cornerstone envisions a new and transformative approach to mental health treatment in New York state: to expand and reshape the delivery model based on 21st-century-specific needs – and the extraordinary capacity – of our region. We want to end cyclical poverty through wrap-around encapsulation and an integrated community approach, built ultimately on wellness-based preventative thinking, connectivity, and immediacy.
Our Model
- Connect directly and rapidly to those most in need, where they are and how they need it
- Incorporate electronic communication, wrap-around care, home-based connectivity, and an informal style.
- Attach treatment (and case management connectivity) to continuums of care already in place, always shifting toward independence and competency while collaborating with nearby primary-care resources, peer support, and early intervention.
- Integrate substance abuse prevention and treatment, with special emphasis on housing, parenting, crisis management, vocational training, long-term sobriety, and other needs.
- Help reduce crises through prevention, in-the-moment management, and adapted safety plans.
- Follow individualized goal-driven plans using client-centered evidence-based approaches.
- Specifically target children, adolescents, family units, minorities and immigrants, those with serious mental health illnesses or difficulty accessing traditional services, and military veterans.
- Empower counselors with independence, dynamic support, professional and friendly office spaces, licensed supervision on request, minimal paperwork, and excellent pay.
If you are currently in crisis
The process of choosing a helpful therapist takes some time, thought, and focus. If you are currently in a crisis, or are worried that you might hurt or kill yourself or someone else, please contact your community’s mental health center, hospital emergency room, or crisis hotline. In Herkimer and Oneida County, call the Mobile Crisis Assessment Team at (315) 732-6228. When the crisis has passed, this information will help you organize the task of finding a therapist for ongoing treatment.