ABOUT US
We are a mental health community that is committed to the acceptance and respect of everyone regardless of age, race, ability, sexual orientation, religion, or gender.
Why is Mental Health care important?
Allows access to more individuals to essential healthcare services such as therapy and medication by having doctors available with various backgrounds and demographics.
Encourages effective problem solving.
Provides the patient options to feel empowered to make your own decisions.
Clients feel respected, accepted and can increase motivation and productivity.
There is an increase in trust among other individuals.
Clients that are unable to pay the full fee or without health insurance we offer an affordable sliding scale, please contact us to find out more.
Our Mission:
To offer competent and inclusive evidence based, systemic therapy services to members of our community.
To educate and inspire inclusivity in the rural communities of Washington, especially regarding LGBTQ+ identities and needs.
Our Values:
Clients:
Clients are our primary focus.
Quality:
Quality processes and quality programs produce enduring value.
Educate:
Staff are called to educate clients and community members with compassion and patience.
Empower:
We empower clients to rise authentically with pride in their identities and health journey
Collaborate:
When we work together, change can happen to empower those that are marginalized.
Culture:
Relationships with ourselves, resources, and supports dictate our health.
Hope:
Hope is the foundation of change
Our Story:
In 2019 a vision was born from conversations during supervision. At the time, Abby White lead a small group practice of four systemic therapists with a passion to do more. With the passing of her father, Henry David Peterson, she wanted to do something big to honor the love and passion he had for education, advocacy, healing, and hope. After many long nights and few unsuccessful attempts at the paperwork, Hope Development Practice (HDP) was born carrying the same initials of the man that sparked the dream.
Abby led her team to create the community mental health nonprofit that we know today. Officially receiving 501.3c status in April of 2022, HDP officially launched with it's first ever Plateau Pride only two months later. This started a tradition that we intend to carry far into the future. In true Queer fashion, we arrived loud, proud, a bit chaotic, and completely filled with love, joy, and representational passion. Each Plateau Pride is a birthday celebration for our agency and the marker of another year of service to our community.
In 2023 we achieved our status as a Behavioral Health Agency (BHA) with the state of Washington. This allows us to bring on board Bachelor's level helpers to assist in the care of our clients, as well as arrange an immediate position and income for freshly graduated therapists. We launched this business model with a target somewhere between traditional community mental health and private practice. We believe all clients deserve the level of care possible in private practice, with the accessibility of community mental health, all while managing to get therapists pay that is higher than the average $18/hr starting pay for Master's level therapists in community mental health and public agencies at the time.
However, for the time being we are stymied in our growth. We currently have a team hovering around 23 therapists, and only 8 therapy rooms to support our more than 1000 clients or 400 client hours provided by our therapists on any given week. We have a big growth hurdle to overcome in order to afford a larger space.
Our Vision:
Once we have the space, we hope to expand our services and foster increased connections with the services available to our community. We want to be able to offer even more groups and services than we already do. We want to be able to foster community among the families, businesses, individuals, and available services. We want to grow our training and consulting efforts, bringing supports to schools, families, and communities that have historically been unsafe for the GSRD of WA.
Our dream is to create a stable pipeline from graduate programs to professional careers for student therapists. Our hope is for therapists to launch their careers and provide competent and inclusive mental health care for clients of the Gender, Sex, and Relationally Diverse (GSRD) populations of Washington. The idea is that student therapists can step into practicum or internship with us, get familiar with what it means and takes to be a mental health therapist, build their skills, complete their school program and make the most educated decisions possible as they determine where in the field they feel like they fit.
This dream became more of a reality with accomplishing our BHA status, allowing us to sponsor Agency Affiliated Counselor credentials for student therapists. When we combine this with our wrap around supervision support, therapists are able to start at ground zero on the business side of therapy and launch to a fully functional private practice of their own should that be the path they choose. Because we do have this passion and have launched many therapists into the field, the door of our practice does have a bit of revolution. Our model sets therapists up to launch to independence, join another group practice, stay on board with us and help build out the team and dream, or even jump to another community mental health or public service position with another agency.
Of course our dreaming does not stop at mental health services alone. We believe we create the communities we want to live in and through education, love, acceptance, and support we can foster a stronger more supportive and inclusive future. Join our movement. Share our passion. Let's connect and collaborate. Reach out. We never know what we can create until we assess our resources and try. We exist and thrive in community!