MORE ABOUT ME

The Gwendolyn Group started as a Social Work Consulting Agency providing mental health education workshops/training. Our goal is to enable clients to learn self-care techniques for themselves and their families during stressful times. These workshops/training lead the New York State Head Start Program to offer me the position of Organizational Needs Assessment for the New York State Sullivan County Head Start Program.

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I have been a school social worker for over 30 years in the Sullivan County school district.  I  work with single families, LGBTQ families, homeless families, divorcing, and grieving families. 
I chose to become an LCSW Social Worker because children were being returned to public schools from a traumatic situation and not ready to socialize or learn.  Many parents/guardians have struggled socially, emotionally, and financially sometimes during their childhood or in their child's educational experience. I wanted to fill the need by helping them develop social skills that enable all members to move to a more meaning full social interaction.

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One of my earliest social worker positions was teaching parenting skills. Parenting is a hard job; it's even harder to work on addiction and recovery issues at the same time. Many of these mothers would share that they had parents that had not learned or taught them coping skills to
deal with parenthood. These were women who loved their children enough to seek treatment for their addiction and wanted to keep their children. They wanted to learn new parenting skills to have more positive interactions with their children when they started this new life in recovery.