Clearwater Clinic

If you are not wealthy, look elsewhere. They don’t take insurance and they don’t have sliding scale. Rich people with issues, however, are in luck!

I can’t say enough about Clearwater. If you are looking for a place to go for family therapy, look no further. The staff here takes a team approach with your family, evaluating your situation and working with multiple counselors to find the best type of therapy or resources for your situation. The counselors are friendly, professional and always available to coach you through a crisis. They absolutely saved our family when we went through some rough times. I always felt cared for and as if each counselor was working on my family like their own. I have seen a lot of counselors and many times I felt my «hour» was really only about 10 – 15 minuted of hard work, but at Clearwater, you spend every minute working on your issues, making it worth every penny.

Clearwater is a counseling center (near Kaiser in Oakland) that offers a breadth of services focused on helping children (educational/​psych assessments, educational therapy, counseling & therapy and ADHD coaching/​counseling for children and their parents).Having 10 years of SST/​IEP/​504 experience serving high school students with special needs (LD, ED, ADHD), I can recommend Clearwater with confidence for children dealing with learning issues, socio-​emotional struggles, anxiety or trauma.
Currently, as a K-​5 clinician at a local Oakland independent school, I’ve consulted with the staff at Clearwater. I’ve been incredibly impressed (as were my colleagues) with the quality of the educational assessments. Clearwater Clinic also offers psychological assessments to help pinpoint emotional struggles that kids may be having. This is incredibly valuable when determining how to best help a child struggling at school or at home, and is not a service often offered by private practitioners who offer educational assessments.
Lastly, many of the therapists at Clearwater are trained in EMDR, a special sort of therapy that is highly effective in helping those who have experienced a traumatic incident or repeat exposure to a traumatic situation. In my private practice as a therapist, I have referred children to Clearwater and their families have reported excellent results in healing from trauma.
Jocelin Saks is a bilingual (Spanish) psychologist at Clearwater Clinic who helps families when they first call asking about services. She is patient, professional, knows her stuff and will get you to the right people to help you or your child. I can recommend both Jocelin and Clearwater without any reservation, and with a growing child approaching the school years herself, I find it a comfort knowing that such a resource is here should our family ever need extra support.