The VB Strong Center, put in place to respond to the needs of those affected by the 2019 mass shooting in Virginia Beach, is set to end its services by Sept. 30.
The center was funded through an initial $3.5 million grant from the Department of Justice and was initially slated to run for 27 months, from October 2019 to January 2022, but was extended. It offered free case-management services to connect people with counseling services in the community as well as programs at the center itself, in Landstown Commons, at no cost to the individual but did not directly provide any counseling services, according Glinda O’Neill, manager of Sentara’s outpatient behavioral health services who ran the VB Strong Center since its inception.
“We could provide the therapeutic yoga, art therapy, music therapy, animal therapy,” O’Neill said in an interview. “We could not provide direct psychotherapy, though our technicians are licensed, but because of the parameters of the grant we acted as navigators to be able to identify the resources in the community and connect that client with those resources.”