New counseling and legal offices opening downtown

A peek inside the windows of the former Goodwill building on Cloquet Avenue shows big changes ahead. Empty for months since the charity shop closed its Cloquet location in December, office and conference room walls are going up where gently used clothes and household items once called to those searching for a deal.

Local attorney Terri Port Wright is hoping to generate a different kind of goodwill here; she's looking to create a facility that will help families and individuals struggling in the legal system by providing space for therapeutic services that aren't currently available in Cloquet.

Those services will be housed in the front of the building, while Port Wright and her attorney partner, Matthew Miller, opened their new office at the back of the building July 15 in the renovated space formerly occupied by the Korman law offices.

"Many of my clients - whether they're family law clients, or child protection, or criminal clients and losing their children, or people whose probation is being revoked - struggle because they are not able to get the services that they need here," Port Wright said, explaining that clients from all over Carlton County have to travel to Duluth for those services. "I think it's patently unfair that this community never had those services, and expects people to go to Duluth. For many people, they either don't have a car, or they can't afford the gas to get back and forth to get the programming that they need."

To accomplish this vision, Port Wright talked to Saprina Matheny, a psychotherapist and licensed independent clinical social worker who previously worked for the Human Development Center in Duluth.

"As someone who's practicing in Duluth, I certainly have had clients who have driven from Cloquet to get the service," said Mathey. "I am also aware of clients who simply can't. So I thought it was an exciting opportunity to develop continual family programming to really meet the missing needs of the community and help parents and families and children ultimately lead more successful and healthier lives."

Matheny said she expects to recruit a team of people who will provide outpatient services including individual, family and group therapy focusing on a range of issues, some school-based services, parenting skills, classes and coaching, as well as anger management, domestic abuse intervention, trauma programming and more.

They also plan to have a space for supervised visits, which are required in cases of alleged abuse, or when parents are observed and coached to build better parenting skills. The same space could be used for exchanges in high-conflict separations or divorces where parents shouldn't see each other when one parent is bringing children to stay with the other parent.

"So there's still some safety, but the parent can also receive some coaching on an ongoing basis about how to change the parent-child interactions they have been having, and to hopefully improve them," Matheny said. "Ultimately, I think parents want to be the best parent they can be, but not all parents have the tools to do that."

Port Wright is hopeful having more counseling and mental health diagnostic services available will also shorten wait times for her clients, who sometimes wait six- to eight weeks for an initial assessment before they can even start receiving any services.

Being half a block away from the Carlton County community services center in the middle of downtown Cloquet is a bonus.

"If we're in a child protection case, and there's a six-month window in which people are supposed to get everything done, and just to get the diagnostic assessment done - not even to get the report - is taking two months, we could easily use up half of their calendar before they even start any services," Port Wright said. "So hopefully with this here, we will have more availability, and it will be more timely."

Matheny Therapy and Counseling expects to open Aug. 15, with plans to hold an open house at a later date.