With an undergraduate degree in political
science (from UCDavis) and a Master of Science degree in marriage
counseling and school counseling (from California State University,
Sacramento), I spent five years as a continuation high school
counselor. During my stint in the schools, I became active in the
school counselors' professional association and decided to go to law
school (The University of the Pacific/McGeorge School of Law) to
acquire the skills to be a more effective representative for my
colleagues.
Soon I started my own law practice, focusing in the early years on child custody, especially cases involving abuse. I pioneered law in California representing adult survivors of child abuse who sued their perpetrators. In later years, I took on malpractice actions against psychotherapists and against clergy who had abused their parishioners.
In 1987 I began teaching parttime at California State University in the Department of Counselor Education. This is a 60-unit master's degree program for marriage, family and child counselors, school counselors, career counselors and community counselors. I have taught Law and Ethics for Marriage Counselors since 1987, including the component required by licensing agencies on child abuse assessment and reporting. I routinely also teach Gender Roles and Sexuality , Group Processes , and Introduction to Counseling . I developed and now teach Counseling Gays and Lesbians and spent four years directing the department's Community Counseling Center , a center staffed by advanced graduate students providing counseling for clients from the Sacramento Area. I routinely teach continuing education courses for University of California, Davis, Extension and the Professional School of Psychology in Sacramento.
In 1995, to better fulfill my passion for teaching and to minimize the adversarial confrontations inherent in litigation, I shifted the focus of my practice to work with therapists and mental health agencies as well as with school districts on the legal and ethical issues inherent in the provision of therapy and counseling services. My practice is now limited to consultation and representation for these professions, and related ones such as other mandated child abuse reporters, which includes training and the on-site auditing of professional services. (See Clinical Practice Audits:An Ounce of Prevention .)
After a little more than two years consulting with Sacramento County
Children's Mental Health, I became Vice President and Director of
Intensive In-Home Services at River Oak Center for Children , a
large non-profit organization in Sacramento County with programs that
provide mental health services to children
from birth to age 18 and their families. The Intensive In-Home
program which I directed has approximately 80 employees serving 170
children
and their families on a 24/7 basis. The program works in the home with
the families and provides behavioral interventions, therapy and linkage
to
services using what is referred to as the "wraparound"
philosophy. I left River Oak in November 2003, and I am again
focusing on my law practice.
In my spare time, I play with computers, read, garden, and love on my Husky mix, Pavlova, and
Langston The Dog! We adopted
a 15-year-old Exotic cat (a breed developed by crosssing a Persian
and an American Shorthair) whom we've named Thurgood.
On July 4, 2003,
after leaving a local store at 7 p.m. when the temperature was still
100°, a kitten walked across the blacktop and under the
truck. He was hot, tired and thirsty. He now lives it up as
the newest family member. We call him Gatsby.
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