Because this is not a credentialed profession, we all come to advocacy from idiosyncratic backgrounds. My path to advocacy was a bit circuitous. I put myself through college (which took ten years) as a family law paralegal, so I have been comfortable thinking about things through the legal lens since I was 18. I studied English in college and got a teaching certificate so my path into education was pretty straightforward. I taught secondary school English for about 3 years in various schools getting laid off from each one at the end of the year because of budget cuts related to the passing of Proposition 2 1/2 in 1980.

I spent a about a year as a Victim Witness Advocate in the Framingham District Court and subsequently worked for the now defunct state agency Office for Children as the Child Advocate/Coordinator covering the South Shore for the duration of the 1980’s. When OFC was being dismantled, I was laid off yet again, and went to work at Westwood as the After-Care Coordinator for the child and adolescent population (effectively the in house Child Advocate) for most of the 1990’s.

My work at Westwood was an invaluable “graduate degree” in clinical assessment and discharge planning including a window into the world of negotiations with insurance companies. When managed care kicked in, I was laid off again and went into private advocacy around 1998. Hence, the focus of my practice in advocacy for children and adolescents with psychiatric disabilities and histories of hospitalizations (or risk of hospitalization).