Lorraine Fern

LCSW, LICSW

Clinical Director

I approach leadership and clinical supervision the same way I approach psychotherapy – working collaboratively with staff and therapists from an understanding of their unique strengths and challenges, with a mutual interest in meeting their goals while feeling supported.

A true Mainer, I earned both my Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Social Work at the University of Southern Maine, and have practiced at all levels (individual, community, and policy; clinical and non-clinical) since becoming a social worker in 2013. My experience includes work with children and families navigating the foster care system, independent living support with adults with significant mental health challenges, cognitive decline and medically complex needs, mental health crisis response for children and adults, and have had my hands in a number of social support programs, professionally or as a volunteer, to respond to homelessness, poverty, domestic violence, and racial and other identity-based inequity.

Academically, in 2015 I published research on the unique support needs of LGBTQ+ folks surviving intimate partner violence. More recently, I had the joy of studying Compassionate Inquiry, the psychotherapeutic approach developed by Dr. Gabor Mate, that centers relationships as a catalyst to change the narratives about ourselves formed by trauma, that impact both the mind and the body.