Christy Porter
CEO, Founder
Chic
Chic (chique) Behavioral Health and Community Services is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit youth organization dedicated to providing wrap around services and resources to youth and their families. Chic utilizes a trauma-informed care approach and a prosocial approach to serve our community. We realize the widespread impact of trauma and understand potential paths for recovery. We recognize the signs and symptoms of trauma in clients, families, staff, and others involved with the system. We are responding by fully integrating knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures, and practices; and seek to actively resist re-traumatization. We utilize a prosocial approach to offer natural ways to learn, practice, and strengthen life and social skills. These essential skills can boost mood and overall mental health and well-being. Prosocial activities can also have positive implications on self-esteem, the ability to collaborate, problem solve, build empathy toward self/others, and resilience.
Mission
To provide a supportive environment where youth will learn how to boost self-confidence, strengthen interpersonal relationships and cope more effectively with daily stressors.
Vision
Empowering youth to prosper in a safe, healthy and therapeutic environment. We strive to create an inclusive community where our focus is promoting social and emotional learning, health, and emotional wellbeing. We challenge youth to chase their dreams, embrace their authentic selves, build lasting relationships, and navigate life’s challenges with bravery and grace.
Our Story
Chic Behavioral Health and Community Services is a 501(c)3 nonprofit youth organization dedicated to providing resources and services to youth, their families, and young women who are at risk or have experienced a history of foster care involvement, child poverty, child abuse or neglect, human trafficking, and/or juvenile justice involvement. Starting in 2023, our team has been delivering youth prevention programs to adolescent girls in traditional, nontraditional, and alternative education settings, and our curriculum and programs have been implemented in multiple organizations.
In-Depth Knowledge
Serving at-risk youth by providing youth prevention programs to those who have experienced a history of foster care involvement, child poverty, child abuse or neglect, human trafficking, and/or juvenile justice involvement. All of our services are skill-based interventions to assist in age-appropriate techniques to manage a child’s behavior in school, at home, and in the community. We use individualized services to focus on developing crucial life skills involving action-oriented interventions for both the child and their family.
Our Founder
Christy Porter
Christy founded Chic to motivate and redirect the most troubled youth with engaging programs. Youth organizations who have worked with Christy include the Boys and Girls Club of Central Iowa, Des Moines Public Schools, Ankeny Community Schools, and Juvenile Court Services.
Christy actively serves on important committees where her voice and initiatives are heard including CPPC (Community Partnerships for Protecting Children), Iowa Task Force for Young Women, Four Oaks Diversity Council, and African American Case Consultation Review Team.
Christy holds *wellness* at the center of all of her efforts, collaborations, ideas, innovations, suggestions, and work. She has seen *"wellness"* being done wrong for families and their youth ― and Chic is an entire program and organization mapped out to be that solution.
