• How much do you charge? If insurance is not paying for services, then the charge is $80 for Telehealth and $100 for live, Face-to-Face.
  • What is your approach to treatment? A multi-dimensional, child-in-family approach to help caregivers help their children is what is provided here. That’s why the caregivers are in the therapy session with the children. Inherent in this therapy process is a strong teaching component, whereby the at-home caregivers become the child’s trained co-therapists. Please click here to read about Beth Powell’s In-Family Services treatment approach.
  • Do you do an initial evaluation to help you make a treatment plan on how to help us? Yes. therapy is always preceded by an evaluation so a treatment plan can be constructed. You will get a copy of the plan and it will be reviewed with you.
  • Are you a counselor? No, I am a psychotherapist and clinical social worker.  A psychotherapist tries to identify the sources of the presenting symptoms and helps people correct the sources so that the symptoms dissipate.
  • Do you do Christian Counseling? Yes, I can specifically provide Christian Counseling as I am myself, Christian. I can also provide counseling and psychotherapy to people on different spiritual paths without judgment nor attempts to influence their belief system to match my own.
  • Do you see children of all ages? Yes, if they are in your care.
  • Do you do play therapy? I have several interventions I choose from to help children, depending on their therapeutic needs. Play therapy could be one of them.
  • Do you write evaluations for court purposes? No.
  • Do you go to court, talk with attorneys, or write letters for attorneys? No.
  • Do you work with children who may not be in a safe place when they are not in my care? I can only work with children who are in safe environments. Children cannot heal until they are safe. If you have a child who may not be safe in the care of a custodial adult, then you may need someone who can do forensic psychology as a form of advocacy, to help you get that child to safety. This type of psychology is not within my scope of practice.
  • Should I give my child her behavioral medications before the evaluatory session? Please try to hold off on as many behavioral medications as you can until after the evaluation.  That way I can get a better idea of what’s causing the presenting behavioral problems.
  • Do you support parents in addressing their own issues to better aid their children’s healing? Of course, but parental drug and alcohol issues are not within this therapist’s scope of practice. Parental issues of traumatic loss, the bad things that happen to good parents and parental depression and anxiety, are within this therapist’s scope of practice and must be addressed. Beth Powell’s In-Family Services addresses the well-being of the parents as well as the children. If this therapist determines that parental drug and alcohol use is affecting a parent’s wellbeing, then services are discontinued until the parents can receive the help they need elsewhere from a clinician licensed in this area of expertise.
  • Do you work with CPS Foster Children? I work with foster-to-adopt or foster-to-PMC cases. I am unable to provide the pro-bono time to work with anyone other than the child or the foster parent. I give the progress notes and the treatment plan of the child to the foster parent and the foster parent transfers those documents to whomever is required to receive them. I am not available for communication with anyone other than the foster parent. I am not available for any part of the legal proceedings involved with this child. So that your CPS supervisor and child placement agency supervisor (if you have one) understand, accept, and agree to the limited scope of my practice with your foster child, please have them read and complete the agreement form before we make our first therapy appointment Click Here.
  • Do you see children and teenagers individually? No, caregivers are in the treatment session with the child and teenager.
  • Can I ever talk with you privately during a session? Does my child or my spouse/partner always have to be in the room with me? Certainly if an individual needs to have a private moment with the therapist during a session, it can be arranged.
  • Do you work with Attachment Disorder?  I work with the source problems that create the symptoms which cause families to seek help. I certainly treat attachment/trust problems between parent and child and child and parent.
  • What is Sensory Processing Disorder?  It’s the new name for Sensory Integration Dysfunction. When a person’s brain has trouble interpreting input from the senses (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell and movement), then the misprocessing of sensory input can cause the brain to go into states of fight-flight-freeze. This causes the child to be anxious and exhibit symptoms of attachment disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, ADHD, and just generally not be as pleasant or as fun to be around as other children who don’t have sensory processing issues are.
  • How do you work with someone who has sensory processing problems, Developmental Trauma Disorder or Autism?  I help clients through a variety of methods such as therapeutic neuro-behavioral play, creative play, parent education, EMDR, cognitive-behavioral therapy and learning to trust and forgive in inner and intra-personal relationships. If the problems in the brain occurred early on before there was cognitive awareness, or actual memory, then the parts of the brain that should have been coming on line at that time were likely negatively impacted. It is those parts of the brain that need to be the focus of the habilitation before the higher, more complex, more aware parts of the brain can really experience change. For example, if it is noted during the evaluation that a child seems dissociative, especially when there is the slightest bit of stress, then proprioceptive and vestibular play might be activities that would need to occur on a regular basis to help the child regulate the stress response. Another example might be a child who interacts poorly and awkwardly in social situations, missing the natural give and take of conversation and missing relational cues like body language and intonation. He might be clumsy, uncoordinated, emotionally dysregulative, impulsive and anxious. Please look at the checklist on the Neuro-Sensory registration materials page. 
  • Is there any research to back up the stated effectiveness of neuro-behavioral play and activities to change the brain? Three studies come to mind: Two involve pre and post HANDLE® neuro behavioral therapy studies (one of which Lucy (Beth) Powell, LCSW conducted) and one involves a study of the effects of a Kundalini Yoga neuro-behavioral activity on the memory of a group of individuals suffering from cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease. The Journal of Neuroimaging, Volume 16, Page 272, July 2006 issue contains an article titled “Imaging Cerebral Activity in Recovery from Chronic Traumatic Brain Injury: A Preliminary Report.” The abstract can be accessed via http://handle.org/.The HANDLE® study that Lucy (Beth) Powell, LCSW, conducted was published in 2006 in Fostering Families Today and Adoption Today and is titled “Behavior Change Proved.”The study regarding the Kundalini Yoga activity and memory improvement is by Newberg, AB; Wintering, N; Khalsa, DS; Rogenkamp, H; Waldman, MR (2010). It is titled “Meditation effects on cognitive function and cerebral blood flow in subjects with memory loss: a preliminary study.” It can be found in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, Volume 20 (2): 517-26.