Building a Value-Reflective Private Practice

I’ve been a social worker for 25 years this month. Yay! I’ve worked in both community mental health and hospital settings over this time, while maintaining a therapeutic private practice at some level throughout. In encouraging clients to clarify and examine their values in guiding decisions that impact their personal and professional lives, I’ve been reflecting on how doing this has guided my social work practice from the beginning, and over two decades in, I can confidently say I’ve built a successful and robust small business that is guided by and reflects my core principles: empathy, authenticity, respect, showing up for others, listening, and truth. 

The field of social work and private practice has changed a great deal since my early days of renting a shared cluttered office one night a week after my “day job” at the time, when I was contracted with one insurance company, seeing two clients, and putting handmade fliers up in local businesses as well as calling doctors’ offices requesting meetings to talk about my services. We now have to navigate a harsh and confusing healthcare access landscape, the ethics and challenges of AI development and tools, venture capital backed mental health platforms, and even viral therapist influencers on social media. The adherence to my core principles over this time allowed me to eventually grow with clarity to a full practice managing and working in a larger office space shared by incredibly skilled independently operating clinicians for seventeen years while flourishing through these changes. This growth has included the development of ongoing referral streams based on my consistent work with clients as well as in the community where my practice is located, and these referral streams have afforded me the opportunity to be intentional about serving additional clients through programs that, you guessed it, align with my driving values. These values continue to be threaded throughout every decision I make around my practice, down to the little free notebooks I have left in coffee shops with information about my services. 

I’ve built a practice that I feel privileged to work in every single day, and this is my wish for any clinician who is excited and inspired to do the same. Running a practice that aligns with your core values makes it easier to focus on being present and skilled in the work we do with clients, as well as adjust to the changing demands and expectations of our field. I’ve started to offer my consulting services, and would be thrilled to chat with you about how I can support you in running a thriving value-reflective clinical practice, no matter where you are in the process! Please reach out to me any time.