Welcome to Mt. Hope Family Center

We are a diverse team of clinicians, researchers, lawyers, and administrators working with and promoting resilience for children and families affected by stressful or traumatic experiences. These can include a need for support around parenting, familial violence, interpersonal violence, community violence, abuse, neglect, disruptions in caregiving, stressful life transitions, and systemic racism. We are committed to recognizing the adverse consequences of health disparities and advocating to ensure equity in access to care.

Mt. Hope Family Center’s unique approach combines clinical services, innovative research, and hands-on mentoring and training in one facility.  We provide evidence-based intervention and prevention services to over 1400 children and families annually in our community.  As part of the University of Rochester, we also train and educate the next generation of clinicians and researchers.

Our team, along with the center’s co-directors, Sheree Toth, Ph.D., and Jennie Noll, Ph.D., are committed to reducing the devastating impact of childhood trauma, especially child maltreatment. We aim to support children and families as they work toward short and long-term psychological and physical well-being and desired developmental outcomes, all while honoring their histories, life experiences, and cultural wealth.

Mission Statement 

Mt. Hope Family Center is dedicated to promoting psychological health and preventing maladjustment and mental illness in the lives of children and families.  We accomplish our mission by conducting innovative scientific research, developing, providing, and disseminating evidence-based prevention and intervention strategies and training mental health professionals.

Statement of Shared Values 

• Diversity – We recognize the inherent worth and unique perspective and history of each individual.
• Relationships – We develop trusting and collaborative relationships among clients, colleagues, and partners to guide the work we do.
• Compassion – We promote resilience in others with sensitivity to their adversity and trauma.
• Excellence – We are dedicated to clinical practice, research inquiry, and professional education of the highest order.
• Integrity – We uphold an uncompromising adherence to high moral and ethical principles.
• Innovation – We strive to be on the leading edge of basic and applied research, service delivery, and training.
• Self and Shared Care – Recognizing the occupational hazards of Secondary Traumatic Stress, we commit to organization and personal practices that emphasize caring for ourselves so that we can effectively care for others.

Meet Baitullah Hameedi

Baitullah Hameedi works with Mt. Hope Family Center as a cultural broker for Sustaining Change, STRONGER and TRANSFORM.  Prior to his arrival in the U.S. in 2021, Baitullah was a multimedia journalist in Afghanistan and a faculty member in the Journalism and Communications Studies Department at Kabul University.  Recently, Baitullah had an Op-Ed published on the plight of refugee students in the U.S.  You can read his Op-Ed here.