WTCI

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Connect and Change

Kathlyn Conway, PhD., LCSW, with Linda J. Arkin, LCSW and Amy Edminster, LCSW

Connect and Change was inspired by a lecture given by Deborah Luepnitz, PhD, in the fall of 2004, about her work with Project Home in Philadelphia. Deborah organized a group of therapists to work pro bono with homeless or formerly homeless people in a project called Insight for All. After the lecture a few of us from WTCI talked informally with Peter Fraenkel, PhD, who was supervising students at City College who were doing short term psychotherapy with survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV). He was concerned that there were inadequate opportunities for these clients to continue in the kind of long-term therapy they needed.

Inspired by the work of Insight for All and responding to the need expressed by Peter, a group of us from WTCI formed Connect and Change for the purpose of providing pro bono long-term psychotherapy for women who were survivors of IPV. From the beginning we have been committed to serving individuals of diverse ethnicities, sexual orientations and gender identifications. Linda Arkin volunteered to supervise the project, based on her experience at the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services and Amy Edminster offered to assist her. Linda had many contacts with agencies and shelters that worked with women who had experienced IPV, and they were eager to refer their clients for long-term treatment.

Linda and Amy do a careful screening to guarantee that the prospective clients no longer live with the abuser, have a track record of being organized enough to make regular appointments, and have expressed a desire for a long-term therapy. In turn, the agencies that have referred to us continue to help provide legal, medical and other concrete services to free us up to focus on the therapy.

Each clinician in Connect and Change sees one client at a time. We generally have 8-10 therapists in the project. We meet monthly to discuss relevant readings, present cases and periodically meet with experts in the field of IPV. All of us would agree that the group experience has been particularly meaningful. Even though the membership changes every few years, it maintains a wonderful cohesiveness and sense of caring for one another. For the last few years, we have welcomed therapists from outside WTCI as well. In the first years, the group was considered a social action project of WTCI. For legal reasons Connect and Change is now a separate entity and has come to include therapists from other institutes and backgrounds who have interest or expertise in trauma and intimate partner violence. While maintaining strong ties to WTCI, this broadening of our group has been enriching.

As therapists, we joined Connect and Change for a variety of reasons. Most of us are aware, as Amy notes from her experience in clinics, that those who cannot pay or can only pay little for therapy often work with an intern for a semester and maybe go on to have many relatively brief therapeutic experiences, This situation makes it difficult for clients to develop a secure, ongoing relationship with a helping professional. Linda explains that she grew up in a poor community and saw the consequences of lack of medical and mental health care for women. As a feminist and beginning therapist she became very interested in intimate partner violence and wrote about it in her graduate school thesis. She eventually became the coordinator and supervisor for domestic violence for their Brooklyn clinics and became involved in the LGBTQ and the Feminist Movements, and eventually taught and supervised at ICP’s Trauma Studies Center.

After completing her training at WTCI, Amy, in part inspired by her work in Connect and Change, went on to train at NIP in their Integrative Trauma program and learned EMDR.

We have all been passionate about Connect and Change because we understand how widespread IPV is and how great the need is for therapists to provide pro bono psychotherapy to survivors. IPV is an enormous feminist and human rights issue. It includes sexual assault, stalking, relationship rape and all kinds of exploit and control of sexual and social freedoms. While it is about violence, it is also about power and economic independence. It has an enormous impact on how children are socialized and their consequent status in society.

Recently, because of the pandemic and the consequent stress on families, there has been a higher than usual number of IPV cases (although vastly under-reported) and the situation has been called “a pandemic within a pandemic.” Despite a recent loosening of the isolation requirements, there continues to be an increased number of physical, emotional, sexual and psychological abuses documented in the last two years. People of color and the economically insecure are hardest hit, often with inadequate housing and lack of safe and stable childcare and social supports. This makes our pro-bono opportunity more important than ever.

While we therapists in Connect and Change have been trained in different treatment approaches, most of us work psychodynamically with a relational and feminist approach. A number of us have had formal training in trauma work or in EMDR and we are aware of the importance of a neurological/embodied point of view. The work is often painful and frustrating, but understanding trauma allows us to stay committed, even with difficult cases.

As members of Connect and Change we welcome new therapists, even those not formally trained in work with intimate partner violence. We feel the most powerful underlying factor in helping these clients is the relationship with the therapist. Those of us in Connect and Change feel that the work has been extremely meaningful. We see most clients for three to five years and one as long as 17 years. There is no doubt it has been difficult and challenging at times and we could not have done the work without the support of one another. But overall we have had the privilege to work with clients who are highly motivated and eager to understand themselves, their histories, and change their lives, who have come to feel empowered. We value the opportunity to be part of their healing and we are grateful for the ways they have inspired us.

We invite therapists who would like to join our efforts to contact:

Linda J. Arkin, LCSW - Director: lindajarkin@gmail.com

Amy Edminster, LCSW - Assistant Director: amyedminster@gmail.com

Website: connectandchange.org