January 14, 2017
Grete Laine M.S., NCPsyA
Grete Laine, is a certified Psychoanalyst, Parent-Child Attachment Consultant and a Circle of Security Facilitator. She has been in private practice with children, families, and adults since 1996, both in Australia and Connecticut. In particular with children, her work is grounded in an attachment informed relational approach with a focus on play therapy and developmental guidance.
Grete is a graduate from the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy in Sydney where she received an advanced diploma in Adult Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and Infant Mental Health. As well as a graduate of The Training and Research Institute of Self Psychology in New York.
She has taught at the Westchester Center for the Study of Psychanalytic Psychotherapy. And, has written and presented on topics about self psychology, mother-infant bonds, attachment theory, adoption, and attachment in schools.
The areas of work which interest her are attachment, the development of the child and family as understood within a social and cultural context, adoption, reflective parenting and attachment in schools.
Grete is in private practice in Riverside, Connecticut.
Chris Fit
January 14, 2017
Charlie Slaughter, MPH
Charlie Slaughter is a primary prevention services coordinator with a focus on early childhood for the CT Dept. of Children and Families and has a passion for children, parents, and providers thriving in life.
Charlie has been instrumental in helping to spread Circle of Security Parenting (COSP) to CT communities and community organizations. Nearly 1,700 people in CT have now been trained in COSP. COSP has been adopted by a wide variety of providers and integrated into a wide variety of settings in CT.
Charlie is particularly interested in the design and development of a community-wide attachment approach that gives parents, teachers, and caregivers new tools to create better quality relationships with infants, children, and students. In turn, these better quality relationships equip infants, kids, and students with various capacities needed to thrive in terms of education success, health, employment, and in relationships with other people. These capacities include curiosity, self-regulation, connection, trust, empathy, kindness, sustaining attention, perseverance, and joy of learning. This approach operates from the guiding principle that these essential capacities are not genetic endowments but are created and strengthened in parent-child, teacher-child, and caregiver-child relationships. They are best built in a quality of relationship that also builds and supports secure attachment.
Jasmine Aziz
January 14, 2017
Ellen Nasper, PhD
Ellen Nasper, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist in private practice in New Haven where she specializes in the treatment of adults with complex post traumatic and dissociative disorders. She serves as Clinical Faculty in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine where she provides clinical supervision to psychology interns, and teaches an Elective course on the Consequences of Attachment Trauma. She also leads a Dialectical Behavior Therapy Group at AIDS Project New Haven. She serves as the Clinical Conference Chair for the Connecticut Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology (the local APA Division 39 chapter).
Dr. Nasper began her career working for the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. During her 26 years of DMHAS service, the prevalence of trauma in the histories of her patients, and it’s relevance to their mental illness, became inescapable. Thus Dr. Nasper became an activist within DMHAS, raising awareness about the prevalence and impact of trauma among people with severe mental illness.
Iron Mike
Ginny Shiller
Mondays
4:30 pm
Ginny (Virginia) Shiller is a clinical psychologist in private practice in New Haven and an assistant clinical professor at the Yale Child Study Center. She is the author of the 2017 book “The Attachment Bond: Affectional Ties across the Lifespan,” which reviews the extensive field of attachment research.
Ginny first became interested in attachment research in the 1970’s, when she chose to use the Strange Situation Procedure (a new assessment procedure at that time) in her Master’s Degree research. She looked at the correlation between facial expressions of emotion during the separation episodes and attachment categories, finding that a broadly-defined insecure-resistant group more frequently showed facial episodes of “distress.” Anger was the predominant facial expression of emotion.
While in her practice she treats a broad range of ages and difficulties, Ginny has had particular interest in working with adopted children and their families. In 2011 her paper “Latency-aged children with attachment disturbances: A conjoint treatment model” was published in The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child.
Barbara Stern
Tuesdays
10:00 am
Barbara Stern, one of the founding members of the Attachment Network of Connecticut, has been an educator for over 35 years as an elementary teacher, consultant and school principal. She received a BS from the University of Wisconsin, an MS from Bank Street College of Education, an MBA from the Yale School of Management, and a 6th year degree in Educational Leadership from Southern Connecticut State University.
Her long experience has taught her that the most effective way to support children’s learning and exploration is to promote secure attachment through positive, healthy relationships with the adults who teach and care for them. Prior to her 15 years as a school principal Barbara was the program manager at the Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy at Yale University for the Comer/Zigler initiative. Currently she is the lead consultant for the United Way of Greater New Haven Secure Start initiative. In that capacity she provides professional development for educators on attachment theory and its relevance to their work with children in schools and childcare programs. She also facilitates Circle of Security ™ groups for early childhood teachers and childcare providers, and follow-up coaching to support application of the attachment lens in their every-day practice with children and their families.
The idea that warm, nurturing relationships matter for optimal learning, brain development, and general happiness, is universally accepted among educators. She has discovered in the past 6 years that teaching educators about attachment theory and guiding them through Circle of Security ™ provides a roadmap for connecting this abstract and lofty idea to on-the ground professional practice.
Barbara has presented her workshop “Using a New Lens: The Power of Connection and Relationships” to audiences working with children ages birth through grade 12, special education PreK-12, and to public school administrators.
Michele Stillman
Saturdays
11:30 am
Michele Stillman is an Occupational Therapist and Registered Nurse who works as an Occupational Therapy Supervisor for the Department of Mental Health & Addiction Services at Capital Region Mental Health Center – Young Adult Services in Hartford, CT. She is a Circle of Security Parenting facilitator and supports young parents in developing healthy attachments with their children and in their relationships. Michele is a licensed foster parent and mother to four sons, who help to daily reinforce to her the lessons of COS-P.
Mondays
4:30 pm
Dr. Tina Mannarino, Assistant Superintendent for Pupil Personnel Services
Dr. Tina Mannarino is an experienced Central Office Administrator and a School Psychologist, with a career that has focused on developing and implementing programs and services for students from birth to age 21 with a focus on special populations and supporting students who bring relationship challenges to the school environment.
Dr. Mannarino received her undergraduate degree and School Psychology degrees from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, her school administration degree from Southern Connecticut State University, and her Ph.D in Education Administration from the University of Connecticut NEAG School of Education. She has presented at several national conferences and conventions including the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Dr. Mannarino’s early career began in New York City high schools as a School Psychologist. She then served as the Director of Special Education and Pupil Personnel Services in New London, Connecticut where she worked for 7 years, followed by service in the New Haven Public Schools for 13 years. Before joining Westport Public Schools she served as the Director of Programs and Services for Young Children and families at LEARN, a Regional Education Service Center supporting 25 school districts in the southeastern part of Connecticut.
Tina Mannarino
Tuesdays
10:00 am
Cheryl Burack is the Executive Director of Family Centered Services of CT (Family CT) and an early adopter of Circle of Security Parenting. Family CT wants all families to be safe and nurturing places where children can succeed and has been a pioneer in developing innovative home-based services to prevent and treat child abuse and neglect. Ms. Burack has presented the agency’s school-based child abuse prevention and parenting with a mental illness programs nationally. Ms. Burack has worked with the Attachment Network of CT to create a “culture of attachment” in CT Communities, most recently partnering with the United Way of Greater New Haven to present a poster at the 16th World Congress of Infant Mental Health, Spreading Circle of Security® Parenting™ in New Haven, CT. Before coming to Family CT, Ms. Burack developed the Family Ties Family Resource Center and Youth and Family Emergency Services Programs at the Waterbury, CT Youth Service System. She was a founding member and first President of the Connecticut State Chapter of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children. She was a contributing author to the training curriculum for The Connecticut Victim Assistance Academy (2001) and to Parental Psychiatric Disorder, Distressed Parents and their Families 2nd Edition (2004). She currently serves on the CT Medical Home Advisory Council and is a member of the CT Early Childhood Alliance and The Safe Babies Court Team.
Cheryl Burack
Saturdays
11:30 am
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