On June 1, French-American Aid for Children will present the latest edition of its Child Health Webinar series: Healing from Childhood Trauma. Trauma is a critical reality faced by numerous American children and their families. There are at least one in seven American children experiencing child abuse and/or neglect, and more than 2/3 of children reporting at least one traumatic experience by the age of 16. Moreover, pediatricians specializing in trauma, warn that childhood trauma, unless treated early on, is known to seriously impact mental and physical health throughout adulthood.
Kristina has served in the social services field for over 14 years specializing in child welfare, family reunification, trauma treatment , mental health, program Implementation, and development. She has two masters degrees, one in social work leadership from Hunter College and in Public Administration from Mercy College. She has held multiple roles at both the direct service and leadership level. Kristina is the Vice President of Child Advocacy and Mental Health Programs at Safe Horizon and also the Founder/CEO of youRmore. Her private practice focuses on mental health and the impact of intergenerational trauma among communities of color. As someone who values leadership, teamwork, and community. Kristina's mission is to inspire, develop, educate and create opportunities for people to identify their strengths to live up to their full potential. Kristina is a Member at Large at the National Association of Social Workers, NYC Chapter, and a board member of several organizations that support youth and family work .
Laura Fernandez provides leadership, management and strategic direction for all of Sanctuary’s clinical services citywide. She oversees a team over 90+ staff including clinicians, case managers and support personnel. Before coming to Sanctuary in 2015, Laura served as Assistant Executive Director of Programs for Edwin Gould Services. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Tufts University and her Masters of Science in Social Work from Columbia University.
Ms. Fernandez has over 30 years of experience working with families and violence, including as a Child Protective Worker in Massachusetts, as a school counselor, and as a social worker in a New York City domestic violence shelter. She served as an expert witness on the overlap between domestic violence and child protective issues in the Federal class action lawsuit, Nicolson v. Williams, which influenced major changes in the Administration for Children Services’ policies towards domestic violence victims.
Ms. Fernandez has initiated several programs for young people that promote positive youth development and inter-disciplinary collaborations. She created an after-school program based on promoting an awareness of human rights, using the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and presented research on this program at an the XII World Congress of Comparative Education Societies. She is deeply connected to bringing a trauma informed family lens to her work with families impacted by domestic violence and helped develop the FamilySafe model currently used at Sanctuary.
Ms. Fernandez is also a field instructor for social work students and has been an adjunct
professor at Hunter School of Social Work in the areas of Child Welfare Policy and Research.
Joseph Boyd LMSW is the Integrated Treatment Model Assistant Director at The Children’sVillage in Dobbs Ferry, NY. Joseph started his career working with children in a variety of settings including summer camps, after school programs and coaching sports. In 2013, he began working as a sociotherapist at the Children’s Village with youth who were adjudicated through the NYC court system for engaging in sexually abusive behaviors. After a few years of doing direct care work, Joseph began working with youth who had to transition to another permanency option rather than their family, this gave him the opportunity to be in the communities that the youth came from and taught him a lot about working with families and the impact of structural racism. Around this same time, the Children’s Village was moving in a direction to implement a new treatment model called the (ITM) Integrated Treatment Model, Joseph and his current supervisor led that implementation and still do. Joseph earned his Master’s of Social Work from Silberman School for Social work in 2020 and he was licensed shortly after. Joseph consults to a variety of other agencies throughout the state and in the United Kingdom on the implementation of the Integrated Treatment Model.
