Previously Connections Counseling and Wellness, a new owner, with a new business name, new location, and added personnel is helping serve the area’s residents with counseling services. Julie Koop purchased the business in June of 2023 and renamed it Hope N Reigns Counseling. The business was then moved from Main Street to the top floor of the Curnutt Center on the Tarkio Tech campus in Tarkio, Missouri, in July of this year. With multiple people to assist, residents are receiving important counseling services in a variety of forms to help make life a little easier.

Alongside Glenn Scott, Julie is working as a Christian counselor and certified peer specialist. She has employed Tisha Jackson, Alanna Keiler, Dusty Slemp, and Sandi Riley as other certified peer specialists, as well as Melissa McAdams as a youth peer specialist and Terry Stanton as an anger management specialist. Dusty Slemp also provides vaping prevention classes. Working with grant funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atchison County Health Department, Northwest Health Services, and others, Hope N Reigns Counseling provides the following: Anger Management, Parenting with Love and Logic, Celebrate Recovery, GriefShare, and Vaping Prevention.

Anger management classes focus on individuals elementary age to adults exploring the reasoning behind their anger and identifying stressors, then learning steps to control their reactions and how to respond appropriately. The next class is Wednesday, November 6, at 7:00 p.m.

Parenting with Love and Logic is a six-week course that focuses on making parenting more fun and rewarding and gives parents the tools and techniques to build respect and healthy relationships with their children. The group meets on Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m.

Celebrate Recovery is a 12-step program for anyone struggling with hurts, hang-ups, or habits such as addiction. This is a program where clients can come together to learn how to find freedom from those issues that control them. The group meets from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. on Wednesdays.

GriefShare is an in-depth course that helps clients deal with their grief and loss. They will be meeting November 6 at 5:00 p.m., November 10 from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m., December 8 from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m., and December 11 at 5:00 p.m. These sessions are held in the green room next to the Tarkio Rotary Theatre inside the Curnutt Center. In November and December, there will also be a stand-alone session called “Surviving the Holidays.”

The vaping prevention class is the only class not grant-funded. Three sessions are $120 and students who have been referred are educated on the dangers of vaping.

With these classes, the certified peer specialists also help the clients focus on different tactics they can use to ease their troubles in a moment of crisis, such as positive affirmations and breathing techniques. In times where a certified peer specialist is not immediately available, these steps can be used to help calm their worries on their own.

Counseling is a service needed by every age and socio-economic background and thanks to the grants, Hope N Reigns is able to help many locals in need. By working with other counseling services in northwest Missouri, they are also able to refer clients to others if there is something needed that they do not offer, or vice-versa. They also can help clients seek assistance with other charity organizations to help with the day-to-day issues plaguing them (for example, if one issue causing them stress is how to pay their electric bill this winter, they would refer them to Community Services). Julie is also a big proponent on getting involved in the schools and Hope N Reigns has already held sessions in Atchison County, Holt County, and Nodaway-Holt school districts. Soon, they will also be showing a video about suicide prevention called “The Ascension,” as sadly, suicide is more prevalent in youth these days. Hope N Reigns certified peer specialists have also provided services at area nursing homes and group home facilities.

Although there is a lot of paperwork (which gets done with the help of administrative assistant Jayne Scott) and hoops to jump through, Julie says that she’s been so blessed to be able to provide these services, which have helped so many already. She remarked that she did not realize how great of a need there was for mental health specialists until she started, and wants people to realize that these services are available to them here locally.

For more information about the services provided through Hope N Reigns Counseling, call 660-623-6055, email office@hopenreigns.com, or visit Hope N Reigns on Facebook.