Jessie Everts
Ph.D. candidate,
marriage and family therapy,
Department of Family Social Science
“You can’t help children without helping their families,” says Jessie Everts, a third-year doctoral candidate in the marriage and family therapy program.
Everts is a school therapist for the Mental Health Collective in North Minneapolis, where she provides preventative mental health services to children ranging from kindergarten to eighth grade. Her work has helped her clients improve school behavior, grades, and attendance.
“I also have contact with their parents and even their siblings,” she says. “Schools are often a good access point for families.”
The work is part of a practicum required for Everts’ degree. Like all doctoral candidates in her program, she is already a licensed marriage and family therapist. She previously worked as a family therapist in what is now called the Emily Program (which provides comprehensive psychological, nutritional, and medical care for individuals with eating disorders) and at Broadway Family Medicine Clinic in Minneapolis.
Everts says many of the children she works with have witnessed or experienced family violence, and many experience homelessness and high mobility. She worries that her clients may not get the ongoing support they need as the economy worsens.
“Even the future of school-based services relies on government grants and funding and may disappear with the economic downturn,” she explains.
Everts, hopes to continue working with children and their families after she graduates in 2010.
“I knew I wanted to work with kids, it was just a matter of choosing the route,” she notes, explaining that working primarily with children via marriage and family therapy is atypical.
—Brigitt Martin