Meet Claire A!
Hi, hello, here we go! My name is Claire (A) and I’m super fresh to GT. I’m excited to be joining a thriving office and community of therapists and clients. I have mostly come from hospital based social work practice and specialized in public child welfare and child abuse and neglect. However, I am ready to see and support changes in a different way and am excited to bring humor and energy into sessions with you!
I recently moved to Austin from Seattle and cannot get enough of the weather. The hotter the better--and sunny. I became a social worker because I am always looking for ways to improve an individual’s experience in a larger system--be it the family system, school system, or the community. I really started my social work career in third grade by developing a reading group for kids to read with older adults who lived at the retirement/nursing home across from my elementary school. I love to see things change for people and even when it’s changes that folks don’t expect; and I want to be there to support and engage in those new things. I’m not sure any of those 8 year olds expected to have 80 somethings as new best friends--but that was a change for the better.
Other than reading (which I love) I am passionate about helping families navigate the many systems and issues that surround a chronic illness. Too often parents are sandwiched between caring for children and their own parents and cannot manage their own chronic health concerns. I want to support the family system to help make illness something to grow and change through--even if that means bad days. I lost one of my best friends to osteosarcoma my senior year of high school; and learning about the ripple effects of death changed how I see grief. Everyone feels grief, and sometimes it never goes away, often we just grow and change around it to learn to more comfortably live with it.
Finally, as my prior jobs might suggest, I have done mostly crisis intervention work. Parf of that means I am passionate about youth who are suicidal/have suicidal ideation/self harming behaviors. I feel that, for the majority of youth, we can work with a plan and as a team including parents/loving adults to keep the youth at home safely. I work hard to be available for crisis planning and support to families and the youth before and after sessions related to suicidal ideation and self harm.
In short (which I am), I have always loved being a social worker in any capacity and am excited to build thriving and challenging relationships with clients--both youth and adults--to help support personal systems and improve quality of life--no matter what that looks like. On a personal note the things that improve my quality of life are: access to water for activities, digging in the dirt (both my parents are archaeologists), my dog Parker, and cooking everything to eat everything. Truly everything. I love to eat. With that being said, I look forward to meeting you and your loved ones, maybe we can talk about food, your bad days, and your good ones and if all that changes, that’s okay, too.