Tiffany Sermini-Greene

After a semester in art school, I recognized my desire to do more in relation to my strong roots in early childhood education and mental health. After working my way through a year in community college, I was accepted on a full academic scholarship at Wheelock college in Boston where I gained experience outside of my studies working with youth in after school programs (a passion of mine since I was old enough to hold a job) and an internship at a multi-service community action agency. This world drew me into a more honed passion, which was helping those facing so much adversity in their lives with expressing and addressing the deeper roots of those challenges in the social environment and within their own development as children and young adults. At the encouragement of family and friends, I applied and was accepted to the first cohort of advanced standing students at Smith College School of Social Work. There I gained additional experience within the realm of the clinical therapy session with children, youth and adults diagnosed with Trauma-related disorders and often managing dual diagnosis, transition and loss; finding my passion in working with youth in foster care settings, staying devoted to serving them as their therapist as they were displaced repeatedly. I found my first full time position as an early childhood mental health clinician and began what has become over a decade of work supporting infants, toddlers, young children and their parents within the context of home and community, partnering with local daycare providers and social service agencies. I have served as an outreach/in home therapist providing individual and family therapy, case management and advocacy and later supervision of intensive family therapy services. Justice, access and equality are important tenants of my practice and I strive to support those I serve to learn, develop and utilize assertiveness skills to meet their identified goals.

Understanding you and/or your child's history and relationships as well as routines and home life are key to the work. We all exist within a context and have somewhere we are coming from. My approach is to support you in finding safety, comfort and joy in your relationships by supporting you to envision outcomes and make practical, small steps with support, coaching and helping you troubleshoot difficult outcomes. I seek to have a collaborative approach that respects your narrative and experiences. I will invite you to listen to and observe what is happening around you and your child so that we can gather information and learn about our options. Being practical and recognizing supports and resources and the barriers that exist are key. I want to share knowledge and hear from you about your own journey in what has and has not worked so that we can find the best path and connect with resources that meet your needs. Setbacks, stumbling blocks, and loss are all part of life. We need time and space to explore this and understand how this impacts our relationships and our aspirations.

I will want to hear from you about what brings you to the work of therapy for yourself or your child and what you want to work on. I will begin the process of gathering information from you including your past experiences and what has been helpful or difficult in those experiences. I will not prescribe instant solutions or specific therapy modalities at our first visit (and most likely not ever). This is a time for us to begin to get to know each other and to make a decision about taking the next step.