PRACTICE UPDATE!  

Dear Readers: Eliana Gil, Myriam Goldin, and Jennifer Shaw, Founding Partners of Gil Institute for Trauma Recovery and Education are thrilled with their expanding group private practice.  Since its inauguration in January 2013, we continue to provide an array of mental health services, specializing in childhood trauma.  In addition, we have expanded our services to include our HEARTS Project, Theraplay, Circle of Security Parenting Groups, and an array of group therapy programs. Our full time staff has also increased and includes:  Andrea Driggs-McLeod, Sonal Patel, and Karyn O'Leary.  Mahagony Hall also joined our part-time contractors and we also have two residents in Marriage and Family Therapy:  Jodi Cobb and Lexie Pfeifer.  In addition, Joseph Heeter is a Resident in Professional Counseling and Aliya Robbins is our second-year art therapy intern from GW University.

We are a group of like-minded professionals who remain invested in our own learning and we stay current on contemporary research findings and treatment approaches.  Please contact us to learn more about our services and check our website for staff bios and clinical activities.

AN ANNOUNCEMENT FROM DR. GIL

Dear Friends and Colleagues: I have been extremely blessed to be "on the lecture circuit" from approximately 1975 or so until now.  I think I have visited every state and traveled internationally to Costa Rica, Ecuador, Chile, Ireland, London, and Australia.  It has been my pleasure to be a favorite presenter for many of the Association for Play Therapists across the country and I have had fun meeting play therapists and colleagues who share my interest in working with children and families.  This picture has a back-story:  I was doing a training in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, one of my favorite places to train (Terry Kottman territory).  The play therapists in Iowa are interesting and interested and ready for fun!!  During this two-day training last month, I gave out some pipe cleaners and asked each table to use the pipe cleaners to make a little piece of art that they could display at the front of their tables.  Spontaneously, they passed their little art pieces around the room and everyone linked them together, a beautiful symbol of this play therapy community and a serendipity wonderful moment!!  

There have been many like this as I have traveled around.  Thus it is with some ambivalence that I will be going "off the road" as of July 2014.  I am going to meet all my commitments through July of next year, and then I will stop doing large workshops in favor of small, more intimate trainings, such as those offered at Starbright Training Institute.  It has been a long and glorious ride and I pass the baton to many other enthusiastic presenters who have lots to offer and tons of energy to spare!!  

 

FAQ's FROM THE LECTURE CIRCUIT! - Dr. Gil

Building an Evidence-Based Clinical Practice

I travel across the country doing workshops on a variety of topics related to child and family play therapy and interpersonal complex trauma in children. On average, I have done about 15 national and international trainings for the last ten years or so - more prior to that time.   Providing workshops allows me to interact with large numbers of mental health professionals, and thus, I get a sense of "the pulse" of my colleagues, at least those mental health professionals working with high-risk children in a variety of private and public agency settings.

The questions I am most frequently asked of late are: 1) How do you provide ethical services in managed cared required timeframes?; 2) How do you respond to the pressure to provide evidence-based practices? and 3) How do you document play therapy practice to meet Medicare charting requirements?