About The Anchorage
Get to Know Us
We have a long history of offering compassionate care for mind, body and soul for over 50 years.
Our Beginning
Though our name and location has changed over generations, our pastoral counseling center holds the distinction of being one of the oldest continuously operating centers in the country. From the seeds planted by the pastoral counseling movement of the 1950s, our counseling group was among the first three centers to take root in Massachusetts, founded as Community Pastoral Counseling Center located in Abington.
The vision for the Community Pastoral Counseling Center came from Norma Cheney Kent in the late 1960s. A member of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Abington, Norma Kent learned about the pastoral counseling movement at the annual regional meeting of the Methodists. Norma understood the needs for pastoral care in her local community through her work as a kindergarten teacher, and in 1972 spearheaded an initiative to launch the Community Pastoral Counseling Center within her congregation.
This church later merged and became the United Church of Christ in Abington. The congregation supported this ministry through endowments, fund- raisers, grants, and dedicated pastoral and lay leadership.
The Norma Kent Center
Renamed in honor of her visionary spirit, Community Pastoral Counseling Center became the Norma Kent Pastoral Counseling Center in 1988. The town of Abington would later go on to name Norma Cheney Kent “Miss Abington” in the year of her 100th birthday, recognizing her significant contributions to the community.
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The Norma Kent Center grew to include an interdisciplinary staff of licensed psychologists, licensed mental health counselors, licensed marriage and family counselors, and licensed clinical social workers.
As it grew, satellite offices were opened at Bridgewater United Methodist Church and at Church Hill United Methodist Church in Norwell. The Norma Kent Center held standing as an Institutional Affiliate of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, maintaining the high standards of the organization.
It became a popular training center for pastoral counselors, with interns coming from Eastern Nazarene College, Andover Newton Theological School, Boston University School of Theology, and Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, among other local master’s and doctoral programs.
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To this day, the center provides internships to masters and doctoral level trainees, as well as post-graduate fellowships.
Pastoral Counseling Services of the South Shore
In 2012, incorporating as Pastoral Counseling Services of the South Shore under the umbrella of the Institute for Spiritual Life and Psychotherapy, the center moved to its present site at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Hanover. Satellite offices were opened at First Baptist Church of Hanson, First Evangelical Lutheran Church of Brockton, Union Congregational Church of Weymouth and Braintree, and Pilgrim United Church of Christ in New Bedford, significantly extending the outreach of pastoral counseling services.
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Through AAPC, the center provided a number of continuing education opportunities for area clinicians. In 2012, the PCSSS Director received a Distinguished Contribution Award from the American Association of Pastoral Counselors for the ongoing work of the Norma Kent Center and PCSSS.
Pastoral Counseling Services of the South Shore affiliated with the Solihten Institute in 2023. The Solihten Institute, a national interfaith counseling network of nearly 40 centers in over 200 offices, recruits, accredits, educates and advances the development of counseling centers that practice spiritually integrated therapy.
The unique identity of ordination paired with clinical licensure has shaped the evolution of our center. The executive directors since the inception of the pastoral counseling center have all been ordained clergy. A number of clinically licensed ordained clergy from different denominations have served on the staff over the years.
The Anchorage Behavioral Health Alliance
Notably, the discipline of pastoral counseling has expanded to include not only ordained ministers with specialized training in clinical counseling, but also non-ordained clinicians integrating spirituality into their work, which is described as “spiritually integrated psychotherapy.”
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With evolving understandings in terminology and a desire to reflect the inclusive nature of our clinicians and clients, in 2025 the Board of Directors moved to change the counseling center’s name to The Anchorage Behavioral Health Alliance, still under the umbrella of the Institute of Spiritual Life and Psychotherapy.
The mission of the center, the interdisciplinary clinical staff, and the Board continue to uphold the vision of our founders from over sixty years ago, to provide healing for heart, mind and spirit.
From its humble beginnings as Community Pastoral Counseling Center, to the expanded Norma Kent Pastoral Counseling Center, to the evolved Pastoral Counseling Services of the South Shore, and to the newly christened The Anchorage Behavioral Health Alliance, our clinicians and staff have provided and continue to provide compassionate care of the soul, for this generation and for those to come.