About TLC Guest Bloggers

Marji Lind, MSW

Marji is the Clinical Director of New Directions, Inc. in Baker City, Oregon. She is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor and TLC Certified Trauma Consultant. In addition to her responsibilities as Clinical Director, she also is a Forensic Mental Health Evaluator and former school counselor.

Lori Gill, MACP

Lori is a Certified Trauma Specialist who has been working with children, youth, and their families since 1999. She has experience working within various professional organizations that specialize in child and youth counseling. Lori’s more recent experience includes counseling in the post-secondary and adult populations focusing on mental health, addictions, and eating disorder treatment. In addition to maintaining a private practice, offering art and play-focused counseling, Lori also presents at public speaking events and workshops and teaches psychology at a local college. You can reach Lori at creative.counselling@bell.net.

Annette Miner, CYW, CTC-S, CYC

Annette Miner is a certified Trauma and Loss Consultant Supervisor with TLC and was awarded the National Institute for Trauma and Loss in Children’s “Trauma and Loss Clinical Specialist of the Year 2007 Award” for the work she does with traumatized children and their families. Annette has a Child and Youth Worker diploma from Lambton College in Sarnia, Ontario Canada and is a certified member with the Ontario Association of Child and Youth Counselors. From 1991 until 2008, Annette was a Crisis Prevention and Intervention Master Level Trainer with the Crisis Prevention Institute, in Brooklyn, WI where she gained valuable experience supporting and encouraging practitioners who were working directly with traumatized children. Her years of clinical experiences working directly with traumatized children in residential care, school settings, churches and in her private practice, have given her great insight and clinical expertise working with children and families touched by trauma. Annette’s clinical focus is faith-based, while incorporating the intervention strategies of TLC®, and this past year Annette completed the Distance Education Pastoral Counselling Program with Emerge Ministries, Akron, Ohio. Annette has had a diverse range of clinical experiences working with children, youth and their families, as well as training those who provide services to vulnerable populations. Annette is a dynamic, positive and energetic presenter whose faith and strengths based approach to intervention provides a unique alternative to traditional intervention strategies.

Some of Annette’s experiences include:

• Bluewater Family Support Services, Parkhill, ON, where she was an Intensive Support Parent and CPI trainer.
• Rebound Youth Services: Sarnia, ON, where she developed and implemented an Anti-Bullying Violence Prevention Project that incorporated a whole-school approach involving parents, administrators, teachers and students.
• Life’s Seasons Brights Grove, ON, where she meets with individuals, children, and families who are experiencing difficulties in their day to day living. She also consults and facilitates workshops for schools, agencies, organizations and churches regarding children with special needs, behavioral issues and other related issues.
• Lakeshore Community Church, Bright’s Grove ON, where she is the Director of Family Ministries/Care and Support where she presents workshops, facilitates programs, and provides individual and group counseling for children, adolescents, parents and adults.
• Faculty advisor at Lambton College, Child and Youth Worker Program where she consults, advises and conducts evaluations for 1st, 2nd and 3rd year child and youth worker students in their field placements

You can reach Annette through her website at www.lifesseasons.org.

Carmen Richardson, MSW, RSW, RCAT, REAT

Carmen is founder and director of Prairie Institute of Expressive Arts Therapy (PIEAT) in Calgary, AB where she offers supervision and training to professionals and community agencies across the prairies. Carmen is a Certified Trauma Consultant and Certified Trainer with the National Institute for Trauma and Loss in Children. She is a Registered Clinical Social Worker, Registered Canadian Art Therapist, and Registered Expressive Arts Therapist. Carmen brings over 20 years experience to her private practice working with a range of issues with both adults and children/teens. She has specialized in the assessment and treatment of child sexual abuse of children and teens offering individual, family and group therapy. Carmen is also one of TLC’s rotating guest bloggers.

Cherie Spehar, LCSW, CTC-S, RPT-S

Cherie is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Facilitator, Play Therapist, and Certified Trauma Specialist in Apex, NC. A clinician since 1994, she has dedicated her life to the well-being and healing of children, women and families. With her extensive clinical background, her professional path has found her in longstanding roles such as Executive Director of The Child Abuse Prevention Center in Raleigh, NC and Training Coordinator and Developer with the North Carolina State University Social Work Department. Now, she can be found at her private practice center, Smiling Spirit Pathways, where she has developed a haven for consultation, child and family therapy, and trauma services. There, she also develops children’s groups and facilitates workshops related to resiliency, “trauma parenting”, and women’s wellness.

Specializing in trauma care, life transitions, grief, and attachment, her trauma-informed approach is highly focused on resiliency principles, particularly child-caregiver connections from birth through the lifespan. Her noted expertise in these areas brings her to wonderful opportunities to supervise, teach, train, and speak on these areas locally and nationally. An author of multiple training curricula, she is currently involved in several exciting projects at Smiling Spirit Pathways, including the writing of a parent publication on supporting children in the aftermath of trauma, and a course on Trauma Journaling. Cherie considers herself an avid, daily student of life and finds the people with whom she has held the privilege of sharing the healing journey to be her greatest, most humbly inspiring teachers.

Go to http://www.facebook.com/smilingspiritpathways to connect with Cherie, where she welcomes questions, thoughts and your stories.

Miki Tesh, LCSW

Before coming to the University of Texas at Austin, Miki worked for 10 years in the areas of child traumatic grief, hospice care, and medical social work. During that time, she co-wrote a children’s book, to help adults help young children cope with suicide in the family. The book won the Florida Hospice and Palliative Care Award of Excellence, in Program Innovation in Clinical Practice. Similar work has been used by the U.S. Army, Florida Counties, and United Healthcare Corp. to help clinicians help children.

Miki is finishing her doctorate in Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin, and expects to graduate in 2012. Her dissertation is on social work higher education, student motivation, mentorship, and life-long professional learning. She is the mentorship program lead for the School of Social Work. She also teaches students clinical counseling and social work skills at the University.

Miki also has a big heart for helping homeless and abused shelter pets. She spends extra time leading a Big Brothers and Sisters program for a local animal shelter.

Jean West, MSW

Jean is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in private practice in Missouri. She is also a TLC Certified Trauma Specialist and integrates TLC’s sensory interventions with strength based solution focused treatment. She is a member and past chair of the St. Joseph Continuum of Care for the Homeless where she continues to train staff on homeless issues facing children in specific the traumatic aspects of homelessness.

Barb Dorrington, MEd

For the past 22 years, Barb Dorrington has worked for the local school board as a social worker and trauma lead. Barb completed her Bachelor of Social Work at King’s University College in 1977 and her MEd in 1983. She has worked in a number of settings and in various capacities including a protection agency and a children’s treatment centre.
 As a registered art therapist for the last 30 years, Dorrington has long been keenly interested in the connection between art therapy and trauma. She has published chapters in two art therapy books called the Hand in Hand series, and more recently she has published various newspaper articles on hurricane related activities. Her journals, from seven trips to Louisiana and Mississippi after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, have been featured in the Trauma and Loss: Research and Interventions journals of the National Institute for Trauma and Loss in Children. Dorrington credits her interest in trauma work with large-scale disasters as ignited by her numerous trips south.

A social work background, interlaced with trauma training and an art therapy background, afforded Dorrington the opportunity to lend her expertise to populations who would normally receive shelter and financial support but not necessarily debriefing support. Currently, Dorrington is excited about a new manual she is working on that supports trauma-informed classrooms and utilizes newer neuroscience discoveries.

Kay Noseworthy

Kay Noseworthy offers seven years of effective, compassionate, and dedicated experience in mental health care. She travels to remote areas to consult clients during personal and community crises and provides walk-in clinical services in these areas. Kay has earned two undergraduate degrees, Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology and Sociology at Memorial University, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada and a Master’s of Art Degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, at Argosy University – American School of Professional Psychology, Phoenix, Arizona, US. Since 2009, Kay has worked at a community counseling center in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, NL. It was there that she gained extensive experience in crisis and trauma using the SITCAP® program.