Cooper Center Partners
Oberlin Community Services is grateful to have partner nonprofits and businesses share the Cooper Community Resource Center. Our goal has been to create a “one-stop shop” resource hub where a wide variety of needs can be met under one roof, saving clients the time, cost, and hassle of traveling all over Lorain County to access services. Partners in this endeavor include:
Providing Oberlin With Efficiency Responsibly
POWER helps Oberlin Municipal Light and Power System customers upgrade their homes, making living spaces more energy-efficient. Weatherization and utility improvements lower both long-term energy usage and bills, and make homes more comfortable for the people who live there. POWER’s work also aims to reduce pollution and carbon dioxide emissions in line with the city of Oberlin’s Climate Action Plan.
Greg Jones, Energy Advocate
On request, Greg will provide free home inspections for residents who are customers of Oberlin Municipal Light and Power Service, performing a walkthrough energy assessment. Based on immediately visible needs, he’ll schedule a free audit with a certified energy specialist contractor. Greg will work with homeowners to identify and schedule projects that can often be completed with POWER financial assistance.
Stephanee Koscho, Program Administrator
Stephanee makes sure POWER’s many day-to-day administrative duties are covered, including grant-writing, bookkeeping, records, correspondence, event organization, newsletter development.
Colors+ Counseling
The culturally competent clinicians of Colors+ Counseling provide a range of mental health services, resources, and education. They are trained to treat both adults and youth for individual counseling, family counseling, and all types of relationships including monogamous, non-monogamous, and polyamorous. In addition to traditional talk therapy, Colors+ clinicians offer art therapy, music therapy, and EMDR to treat a wide range of issues that are unique to each person.
Lital Ruderman, LPCCS
Lital (they/them) is a licensed professional clinical counselor with the supervisor designation and a doctorate in cognitive psychology and a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling. As a lifelong scholar and a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, they’re passionate about decreasing the stigma around mental health concerns and providing a safe and empowering space for clients to explore their identity and their authentic self.
Brylee Jones, LISW
Brylee specializes in treatment with the LGTBQIA+ population, trauma, anxiety, depression, sports/performance anxiety, and chronic illness. She uses an empathetic, anti-oppressive, client-centered approach to support clients toward their own identified goals. As a member of the queer community, her goal is to create a safe and affirming space for people of all sexualities, relationship types, and gender identities.
Riveon and Let’s Get Real, Inc.
Riveon (formerly The Nord Center and The LCADA Way) offers comprehensive behavioral health services, bringing mental health and addiction treatment together under one umbrella in Lorain, Erie and Cuyahoga counties and surrounding communities. Let’s Get Real, Inc. provides information, education, and resource assistance to families and loved ones in their journey from addiction to recovery. It assists in finding detox and treatment, providing a family group and group for children impacted by substance abuse, as well as other sober support groups.
Riveon and Let’s Get Real, Inc. share an office as partners in the Rural Response Network. This consortium works to reduce overdoses and overdose deaths and strengthen and expand the capacity of Oberlin, Wellington, and surrounding rural townships to engage high-risk populations and provide substance use/opioid use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery support services.
Visit www.riveonhealth.org for more information!
Visit www.letsgetrealinc.org for more information!
Visit www.ruralresponsenetwork.org for more information!
OhioGuidestone
OhioGuidestone provides a complete continuum of prevention services and mental health and substance use treatment, focusing on responsive person-centered care to approximately 26,000 people each year through telehealth and locations across the state. It offers services for mental health, substance use disorder, family care, foster care, juvenile justice, residential treatment, home-based counseling, job training, and more. At the Cooper Center, it also offers once-monthly health clinics during food pantry hours.
Meadow Speech Therapy
Owner Kris Ulrich Gilland is a state certified speech-language pathologist who has worked in the Lorain County area for 24 years. She has extensive experience working with children demonstrating a wide range of needs and abilities. In addition to professional experience, Kris is a PhD. candidate in early childhood special education at the University of Toledo. She provides child-centered, play based speech therapy driven by clients’ strengths.
National Alliance on Mental Illness
NAMI is the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization, dedicated to building better lives for the millions of Americans affected by mental illness. NAMI Lorain County’s mission is to improve the quality of life for individuals living with mental illness by providing them, their families, and the public with education, support groups, and advocacy in the public arena. It does this through classes, support groups, suicide prevention and outreach to survivors, and other resources.
Legal Aid Society of Cleveland
Legal Aid's mission is to secure justice, equity, and access to opportunity for and with people who have low incomes through passionate legal representation and advocacy for systemic change. At the Cooper Center, its attorneys hold a free brief advice clinic on the second Tuesday of each month from 1:30-4 p.m. using the second floor conference room and cubicles. Legal Aid attorneys meet with Lorain County residents by appointment to discuss civil issues such as divorce, custody, property disputes, employment disputes, contracts, landlord-tenant claims, small claims, and personal injury.
Jennifer Kinsley Smith, Esq.
Previously a supervising attorney in Legal Aid’s Health & Opportunity Practice Group, Jennifer recently transitioned to the role of managing attorney for Lorain County. She is working to increase Legal Aid’s partnerships with community partners, courts, and bar associations in Lorain County while also continuing her work with the Health & Opportunity Practice Group.