Before Alliance Mental Health existed as it stands today, I was a therapist moonlighting Fridays and every other Saturday trying to save enough to launch a practice. Robin spent her weekends navigating the world of billing insurances around the edges of a full time job. It took a lot of persistence, trial and error, and hard work to figure out the ins and outs of a job I had come to love in a field that was increasingly frustrating. If Robin hadn’t been there to navigate the labyrinth of insurance and contracts, I’d have given up.
But we didn’t give up. We kept helping people. We kept learning and growing. We kept striving to make a business that would support ethical and effective mental health treatment, and create an environment where therapists would feel supported and valued, their work honored, and our clients supported.
We went from a small office sub-let from a colleague, to a small office in a independent practice, to an office of our own in Dover. We grew, and the number of people we were able to help grew. There were challenges and progress, setbacks and successes, but always a drive towards bettering ourselves, bettering our business, and bettering the services we offered our clients.
After seven years, I’m proud of our progress. We have built the business we had envisioned: ethical, stable, effective, client-centered, supportive of our employees. I wish I could say all the challenges were behind us, but I know there’re just as many ahead as behind. I’m confident that we will continue to grow and thrive, and that our Alliance will continue to provide for our employees and our clients.