About

I work with, for and on the behalf of teenagers. I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and provide training, consultation and therapeutic services in the community, in schools, in shelters, in kids’ homes – wherever they need them. I do this through my private practice, often contracted through the NJ Division of Child Behavioral Health Services, though not always.

I am also a training and consultation specialist for the Violence Institute of NJ (University Behavioral Health Care – UMDNJ). There I manage the Creating Safe and Respectful Environments grant from the NJ Juvenile Justice Commission, where I helped develop some training for juvenile justice professionals, mostly officers, on effective ways to work with kids in the juvenile justice system. I’m now the coordinator of services for this grant and the lead trainer. I am a trainer for the Rutger’s School of Social Work, Institute for Familes and the Statewide Traumatic Loss Coalitions for Youth program. I regularly provide workshops for schools, residential treatment facilities, youth shelters, and clinical and other youth serving professionals.

I received my MSW from Rutgers in 1998 and worked for a few years as an in-patient clinician, first for Trinitas Hospital in Elizabeth, and then for UBHC in Piscataway, NJ. As an in-patient clinician I worked with kids who had nearly every psychiatric diagnosis there is and treated kids and families coming from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds.

After having that experience, I would recommend that any freshly minted social worker wanting to do clinical work with kids should go work psychiatric in-patient for a few years. You’ll really learn the mental health system and guaranteed, you will be humbled by the strength of the children you meet.

After I left that position I became a crisis clinician for the Child Crisis Intervention Unit of UBHC, with my main post being out in the Middlesex County Juvenile Detention Center and Youth Shelter. There I continued to carry a caseload of kids who were often lost in the child services system, sometimes languishing on DYFS caseloads and bouncing between detention, the shelter, and the psychiatric hospital. It was another unforgettable experience and I’m forever grateful to the kids I met while working there, and what they taught me about resiliency. I also worked with some incredible co-workers, both at UBHC and staff and officers at the detention center and the shelter.

While I was working there I was asked to become the coordinator for the Middlesex County Traumatic Loss Coalition (TLC) – a branch of the Traumatic Loss Coalitions for Youth program. After working in crisis services and in-patient care, I had developed an interest in trauma work, and prior to my MSW degree I had been working in public policy – so the position was a good opportunity for me to explore those interests. In this position I helped establish the coalition in Middlesex County by bringing together a group of professionals from schools, mental health, law enforcement and other social service agencies to identify issues and resource needs in the wake of traumatic deaths in the county. This initiative focused heavily on suicide prevention and post-vention in schools, but also on helping schools and communities cope in the aftermath of 9/11 and coping with other types of traumatic losses as they occurred. While doing that I helped establish the county’s first trauma response network for schools. The Middlesex TLC is now under the very capable leadership of George Scott.

In the spring of 2005 I was asked to be a consultant on the Creating Safe and Respectful Environments grant at UBHC. After my work in juvenile justice, I was all too aware of how dire the need was to work collaboratively across the boundaries of mental health and juvenile justice, and this grant provided the opportunity for that to happen both on a statewide level and with officers and staff in every detention center in the state. I was excited to get involved.

In the spring of 2007 I completed the International Trauma Studies Program , which was part of Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. My project for that course focused on developing a training program and self-care curriculum to help juvenile justice professionals prevent burn out. The project was funded by the NJ JJC and is being implemented state-wide this year.

In addition to all of that, I’m also a musician, a writer and a bit of a tech geek, so feel free to drop me a line with questions about websites, especially blogging with wordpress – my new tech obsession.

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Pertinent Data:

Licensed by the state of New Jersey as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. License # 44SC05189000.

Education:

Master of Social Work
Rutgers University, New Brunswick NJ – May 1998

Bachelor of Arts, English
University of Massachusetts, Amherst MA – May 1991

I can be reached easily by email at amy (at) amysjacob (dot) com

I can also be reached by phone at (732) 917-0910.