First Integrated Community and Care Services

First Integrated Community Care Services (F.I.C.C.S) was founded by Nahomie Julien in 2013 to use the power of psychosocial support to build a world where minority youths had the opportunity to grow with dignity. Our goal was to provide emotional and physical support to bridge the gap between minorities and the rest of society. FICCS’ initial vision was to provide mental health services to youth who were recently out of school because they were constantly getting into trouble. FICCS discovered that school was treating the behavioral problem as disciplinary problems and therefore putting these kids at a disadvantage. Noticing the need, the FICCS founder endeavored to work with kids who had been expelled from school to help reintegrate them back into normal school rather than their being placed in an alternative type of school. Seeking to bridge a gap in the services, of the many trends that emerged during the free after-school supervision and the summer camp provided, our focus has grown from providing psychosocial support to kids with educational and behavioral problems to providing mental health, substance abuse, harm reduction, HIV testing and counseling, and teen pregnancy counseling services to minority populations. Since our transition to Fulton and Gwinnett County, we have been providing mental health and substance use services to LGBTQ youth and minorities of color; Housing referral/placement, employment readiness training, and psychosocial support; HIV testing and counseling, as well as targeted medical case management for individual living with HIV;  and domestic violence shelter referral and placement.