Fifty-five years. One Conviction That Never Moved

In 1971, a small group of Charleston clergy, physicians, and lay leaders looked around their own congregations and saw something the pulpit couldn’t fix alone: people carrying more than prayer could hold, with nowhere affordable to bring it. So they built one. Fifty-five years later, that place is still open — and it has never once turned someone away.

“One cannot separate the personal and interpersonal maturity of an individual away from his religious and moral development. They are facets that interpenetrate each other.” — from KPCC’s founding Statement of Purpose, 1971

That sentence was written the year KPCC was founded, and it still describes exactly what we believe. An interfaith board — clergy, physicians, attorneys, and lay leaders from nearly every denomination in Charleston — signed their names to something unusual for 1971: a counseling center built on the conviction that faith and mental health were never meant to be treated separately.

Our Mission

We walk alongside all persons- providing professional counseling, education, and consultation at an affordable cost, grounded in a faith that honers the depth of every human life.

Our Belief

We guide people- not by telling them where to go, but by helping them find their own direction within themselves and navigate their relationships with others.

The First Years, By the Numbers

June 1, 1972 — Doors open on the third floor of First Presbyterian Church. The sliding scale starts on day one and has never stopped.

First six months: 65 intakes · 383 counseling hours · $6,220.50 in total fees collected.

First two years (1972–1974): 4,694 individuals and families seen · 3,716 hours of counseling delivered · 305 new intakes · 400+ professionals trained through six 15-week courses.

By its second year, more than 20 churches, synagogues, and civic organizations — Catholic, Jewish, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Lutheran — were standing behind KPCC financially.

“In West Virginia alone, there are approximately 136,000 people who suffer the effects of emotional and spiritual stress without any help at all. To meet the present need, we would have to have twenty-nine hundred new trained professionals immediately.” — Rev. J.R. Keener, KPCC Director of Clinical Services, 1974

That was the scale of the need KPCC set out to meet with three counselors and a borrowed church office. Fifty-five years later, we’re still meeting it — one relationship at a time.

1972

KPCC appears on WMUL-TV in a segment called Bringing Father In — local television coverage in its very first year of operation.

1973

KPCC co-hosts the Crisis in Family Life Conference, the first interdisciplinary gathering of physicians, clergy, social workers, and psychologists ever held in the Kanawha Valley. KPCC also pursues a $250,000 national funding proposal for a statewide family-checkup program.

1974

The St. Albans satellite opens — KPCC’s first expansion beyond Charleston.

1976

Federal 501(c)(3) status granted.

1977

Marriage enrichment workshops launch statewide — KPCC’s first step from crisis response into prevention.

1994

The Jim Dent Dinner is born, becoming KPCC’s signature annual fundraiser for three decades.

1995 -1996

Sandcastles, KPCC’s children’s divorce-recovery program, launches and earns national press: NBC Dateline, 20/20, Time Magazine.

2000

30th anniversary. Four locations, 12 therapists, sliding scale still running exactly as written in 1971.

2012

The Motivational Interviewing training program launches — training more than 2,000 professionals across West Virginia by 2019.

2014

In response to a WSJ ranking on marriage struggles in Charleston, KPCC launched dozens of relationship-skills workshops — the same year it was named West Virginia Counseling Center of the Year by the West Virginia Counselors Association.

2020

COVID closes the churches that housed KPCC for nearly 50 years, overnight. Telehealth stood up in days.

2021

KPCC buys its first-ever building — 1116 Kanawha Boulevard.

2022

Eric Milam becomes Executive Director.

2026

55 years. The Compass Care Model. Still true to the founding conviction.

Recognized Beyond Our Own Walls

  • Local press, from year one — WMUL-TV (1972), Charleston Gazette and Daily Mail throughout the 1970s.
  • National press — Sandcastles featured by NBC Dateline, 20/20, and Time Magazine.
  • State recognition — West Virginia Counseling Center of the Year, West Virginia Counselors Association.
  • Statewide reach — 2,000+ mental health and healthcare professionals trained since 2012.

A Home of Our Own

For nearly fifty years, KPCC never owned a building. It borrowed church basements, sanctuary offices, whatever congregation had a spare room and a shared sense of purpose. Then, in the middle of a pandemic that shut every one of those doors overnight, KPCC found a permanent home of its own for the first time in its history. It wasn’t the easy way to get there. It was the true one.

KPCC Today

55 years | 2 locations | 55 counties reached via telehealth | 14 licensed clinicians | ~1,000 individuals and families served every year | 2,793+ subsidized counseling sessions delivered through the Client Sponsorship Fund since 2020

The name we go by has changed. The address has changed. What a 1971 Statement of Purpose called for hasn’t moved an inch: that no one carrying something heavy should be turned away because they can’t pay for the help. Fifty-five years in, that’s still the whole point.