Empowering Veterans and Justice-Impacted Individuals

Ever wondered how a choice between two career paths can shape your professional journey? Listen as we chat with Valerie Boucard, a licensed social worker from Connecticut, about her fascinating transition from case management to social work. Valerie shares why she chose this path over licensed marriage and family therapy, emphasizing the flexibility and wider scope it offers. Gain a deeper understanding of the differences between case management and clinical roles, and learn about Valerie's heartfelt dedication to helping military veterans and her growing interest in trauma work. Her story provides a unique window into the challenges and rewards of the mental health profession.

In another inspiring discussion, Valerie delves into her exploration of various therapeutic modalities such as Reiki, EMDR, and drumming, spotlighting their positive effects on clients with anxiety and ADHD. Discover the natural and non-traditional healing methods that fuel her practice. Valerie also reveals her ambitious vision of establishing a nonprofit to support justice-impacted individuals, highlighting the importance of second chances and the hurdles they face in reintegration. Her unwavering commitment to learning diverse therapeutic techniques and her advocacy for social justice are sure to captivate and inspire our listeners. Join us for an episode brimming with insights and inspiration.

 www.linkedin.com/in/valerieboucard
IG: Haitian_V

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Transcript

Aubrey: 0:06

Welcome to Kindred Conversations, the show where we shine a light on mental health professionals, who are the unsung heroes of our communities. Join us as we delve into their journeys, strategies and the art of healing minds. Together, we'll break down stigmas and celebrate resilience. I'm Aubrey Baptista, your host, and today we have Valerie Bucard, who is a licensed social worker in Connecticut. She is a junior professional, so she has a fresh perspective on our show today, and I met Valerie at A2B Con a few weeks ago.

Aubrey: 0:40

A2b Con is the major conference that my coach, brandon Gadoris, puts on, so it was really an honor to get to meet Valerie there, because she's a mutual connection to someone that I highly regard. So welcome, valerie, thank you. Thank you, aubrey, it's nice to be here. Yeah, it's great to see you again. Last time we saw each other, we were hanging out after A to B con and, you know, just getting to know each other and really vibing so glad that we could have you here, thank you, thank you, yeah. So how did you get into mental health? Like what is like what is really like, your driving passion and desire for, for being in mental health?

Valerie : 1:27

desire for being in mental health. To be honest, I stumbled upon it. I was a case manager and then one day I was very good at my job. I decided to go to be a licensed marriage and family therapist, but my director was like no social worker. I don't know what that was. I compared and contrast and I was like you know what social worker it is? And that's how I got started.

Aubrey: 1:48

Yeah. So tell those of us who don't understand all of the differences like well, why marriage and family therapy and why social work? What's the difference?

Valerie : 2:07

that had me pick social worker was because it was more flexible, because with licensed marriage and family therapists the field is you can only become a clinician, but with a social worker you can be CEO, you can be a school social worker, you can be a clinician. So the title was very flexible. That was the appeal to me.

Aubrey: 2:24

Yeah, and you had said that you got into the work because you liked the case management and so the social work kind of encompassed some of that case management work.

Valerie : 2:34

Yes, definitely Definitely, because with case management you have to help them with resources, but as a clinician you can't. And that's something I had a trouble learning when I first got in the field, until I had a training and the guy said it's the client and not the problem. That's when it hit me. I realized that as a clinician I'm only allowed to listen and empower my client and help them find a solution. But as a case management, as a case manager, that's where I would actually solve their problem. So it took a lot of getting used to for me.

Aubrey: 3:18

Yeah, so what you've encountered is clients who, like you, want to be able to go an extra step further and helping to facilitate resources for clients. Resources like, for example, like um, helping your client get a job, like you might want to, like advocate for them with the actual like unemployment office, whereas, like a clinician might mention the unemployment office, but they're not, it's not within their scope of practice to go out to the employment office, unemployment office and actually facilitate a relationship. That's sort of what you're talking about, right.

Valerie : 3:59

Exactly.

Aubrey: 4:01

Yeah, so you're. What you want to be able to do is to do more facilitation of those relationships. Yeah, why not? Yeah, for sure. And so, since you've gotten into the work I know you said that you audience that when you come into mental health, you don't necessarily, like, 100% know what specialization is calling to you. Right, because we were talking a lot about this a few weeks ago, right, exactly. So you had told me that right now you're working with veterans. Is that right?

Valerie : 4:40

Yes, I work with a broad range of clients, but my specialization is in military.

Aubrey: 4:47

Okay, okay, yeah, so military like current military, previous military.

Valerie : 4:55

Military after they've been deployed Okay, after the trauma has been onset. But, believe it or not, I've actually been thinking since we had that conversation and I believe that the career path I want to go is trauma.

Aubrey: 5:13

Okay, yeah, I remember we were talking about that and you had said that you really had a lot of passion for trauma. There is a lot of great experience in the military population that you're talking about, so how do you yeah, so how are you foreseeing the work developing for yourself in trauma?

Valerie : 5:34

At the moment, I'm learning as much modalities as I can. For example, sunday my job is holding a Reiki training and then next Wednesday my coworker is going to train me in EMDR. Okay, all right. Oh, and I've also started with drumming. You know the musical drum where you tap and it has different tones. Yeah, that also has been helping calm down my clients that come in anxious or hyperactive.

Aubrey: 6:09

Okay, so is the drumming kind of incorporating into like the first part of the session.

Valerie : 6:15

Yes, in the beginning of the session I will allow them to play it and it kind of gets rid of all the anxious and extra energy they have and allow them to have a calm, and it actually works very well. I've seen it calm my clients who are super anxious and I've seen it call my clients who have ADHD Awesome.

Aubrey: 6:39

Wow, yeah, I've seen that as well. I actually have a drum that I had made. At a wilderness conference, like five years ago, I signed up for the all day drum making and yeah that was pretty cool.

Aubrey: 6:54

So it's like a native drum that I got to make myself. It was pretty cool, so I use that with clients sometimes too Awesome. You bring up a really good point though, valerie, about like this beginner, like beginning in mental health, because you're you're sort of towards the beginning, you've already graduated and so you've gone through your internships, which really is the beginning, right, but like you're still in that discovery place. So I want to give you first of all, a lot of credit for coming on to the radio show today, because it's not like you have it all figured out right, thank you. Thank you, yes, it's true. Yeah, you're so welcome. So I think that there's a lot of bravery in the beginning parts of mental health and there's also a lot of imposter syndrome.

Valerie : 7:38

Oh, definitely true.

Aubrey: 7:39

How are you working through that?

Valerie : 7:55

one of the things I love doing is that time between sessions. It's when I see the other clinicians and I'm like, hey, and then we just talk about modalities, techniques that we find to work the best, or techniques that's up and coming, or techniques that we're currently using, and I'm like, okay, how have you find that to work? What exactly do you do? What is your specialty? And I found a lot of clinicians I've been learning from.

Aubrey: 8:22

I'm excited about Reiki for you. What drew you to?

Valerie : 8:26

Reiki. I've always been interested in Reiki because of my background and upbringing. I'm from an island called Haiti, so I grew up with all natural medication and when I worked at a doctor's office a chiropractor she was very organic there was a naturopathic doctor, there were massage therapists, we had Tai Chi and we had Reiki, even cupping and acupuncture. So I was raised with non-traditional modalities anyways. So I was always interested in Reiki. When I found out what it was, I always wanted to become a Reiki master and then one person also went to the Brennan School of Energy Healing, which I thought was fantastic. I got an energy healing. That was great.

Aubrey: 9:18

What did you experience in your energy healing?

Valerie : 9:22

I experienced it was more like a weight lifted off my shoulder and I got motivation. Wow.

Aubrey: 9:33

That's pretty powerful. Yeah, okay, all right, I'm curious what brought you to A to B Con. That's where we met a few weeks ago. Met a few weeks ago.

Valerie : 9:44

It was Brandon. Because I met Brandon randomly, he'll tell you the story. I met him at a bar. I met his friend and I'll be very honest with you at this moment. I met his friend, rob, and Rob was telling me about his business, his fitness business, and how Brandon was able to help him. And then, when I met Rob, he seemed like he had everything together and I was like Rob, I'm going to be honest with you, I have so much potential, so much energy, but I don't have guidance. I don't know what to do with it. I don't know where to go. So then he and I saw Rob again. I say, hey, where's that dude you're going to introduce me to? Like I've been waiting. You never hit me up. And Rob goes hey, he's at this bar with us right now. I was like no way. So he kind of signaled Brandon and so I had like a one on one with Brandon. I said, listen, my name's Valerie. This is what I want to do. And Brandon was like excellent idea, how do you think you're going to go about it? And he's been helping me manifest that dream and turn it into a reality.

Valerie : 10:54

What was the goal that you told him about? The goal is to open a nonprofit to help justice impacted individuals, because I realized as a case manager that's the only group in society. Society kind of turns their back on Because if you have people with addiction, it's no longer a taboo, we help them. People with mental health, it's no longer a taboo, we help them. But when it comes with somebody that's been just as impacted, everybody's like oh, what'd you do? Like you deserve what you got. Nobody's really helping them reintegrate back into society. Because Connecticut, the state I'm from, is considered a second chance society state. What does that mean? Meaning that you can always start again If you messed up. It's not the end of your life, like you have a criminal record and your life is over. There is life after you messing up. You can always. It's never too late to start over again.

Aubrey: 11:57

So how does that work? Within within Connecticut, Do they make it so that people's records are easy to expunge?

Valerie : 12:07

Yes, they do do that and they also have what it's called. Basically, instead of just putting somebody to jail, what they do is they have alternative programs to reduce recidivism, which is the act of reoffending. So they have programs to help them not redo the behavior, kind of like behavior modification. Like, for example, if somebody has an intimate, we don't call it domestic violence anymore, we call it intimate partner violence because it can be with anybody in the household. So, instead of straight up sending somebody to jail because of an intimate partner violence situation, what they will do is have you take classes for intimate partner violence, where you learn about triggers, you learn about the will of power and control, you learn about triggers, you learn about the will of power and control, you learn about asking for a timeout and how to properly and effectively communicate. So they call it jail diversionary programs.

Aubrey: 13:18

So how do you see your role as a mental health professional fitting in with your role as the leader of a nonprofit?

Valerie : 13:27

I want to integrate the nonprofit with my clinical work because I volunteer at this organization called Hangtime awesome organization. It helps people in more ways than one, reintegrate back into society and more ways than one reintegrate back into society. And what I found is when the men and women are sharing their stories, one thing that is surprising that they say is that they have asked to be returned back into their correctional facilities because coming out was so overwhelming, like they went in and there was flip phones. They come out and there's FaceTime and they're like whoa, too much lights, too much noise, too much activities. So as a mental health therapist, I want to help them reintegrate.

Valerie : 14:20

Not only that, but I've spoken to a lot of the men and they've gone in at 14 years old, come out at 37 and they're trying to date in the world and it's confusing because they could have dated, they could have been gay for the stay and they're kind of confused about their sexuality because they never got to explore it or figure out, like what their preferences are. So sometimes they come out with no experience in dating and they don't know how to treat or talk to women. So sometimes after the first date, you know, because they have their little money. They have like a regular nine to five. They're paying the halfway house and then they go on a date and spend a lot of their money. You know a hundred bucks is a lot. So then you're like, oh, I didn't get any. And I'm like that's not how it works.

Valerie : 15:15

How long have you known her? Did you feel secure? Did you establish a rapport? And you're just like no, I took her out, I spent money. So they have to learn relationship patterns and how to treat women and talk to females and about their sexualities. On top of that, yeah, that's amazing.

Aubrey: 15:36

What an incredible vision, and I don't want to ask you too many questions about it, because I know that this is something that is part of your exploration journey. Right, it's like you're learning as you go. Yes, yeah, that's really incredible, and I want to let you know that I did do some work in my earlier part of my career with offenders coming out of, or ex-offenders who had come out of jail and they were being reintegrated, so my first job was actually a reentry specialist.

Valerie : 16:06

That's awesome. How did you like?

Aubrey: 16:07

it? I did, and it was an interesting role because at the time it was funded by grant funding through the county.

Aubrey: 16:16

I was working in New Hampshire at the time, and so the county, the person who worked for the county her name was Carrie Lover and as far as I know, she's still working for the county and she applied for grants through the Fed, through federal government grants to reduce recidivism, like you're talking about, and so she had gotten the grants to be able to hire two reentry specialists.

Aubrey: 16:45

So it was myself and another gentleman who were working hand in hand and our job was to basically like, create our own job, which is kind of funny, right. Like we were like, okay, you need to kind of figure it out as you go, and she was guiding us, but she was helping us figure it out as you go, and she was guiding us, but she was, she was helping us figure it out as we go. So we were just trying to figure out how do we use our 40 hours a week to help these people as much as possible. We each had a County car, and so I would take them from, I would take them from the jail, I would they were allowed to be released to me for like a period of time and I would take them out and I would bring them to like different restaurants to get job applications so that when they got out they would have already put in a job application.

Aubrey: 17:34

We went to the social security office to go and get applications for their social security cards, for the licensing office to go and get like their driver's license, because you can imagine like when they're incarcerated, everything is expiring while they're in there.

Aubrey: 17:53

So they have to go out and literally like restart their whole life, you know, getting their social security cards and their driver's license and application for housing and low income housing, like all of the above. We would go out and physically go and get all of these different things, and so that was a big part of the role that I played. But I just wanted to let you know that because if you have any questions as you go forward or need somebody to say, hey, go and talk to this person, like you're welcome to reach out and we can do a call in the future.

Valerie : 18:27

Oh, definitely, you know, I will be hitting you up, yeah of course.

Aubrey: 18:31

Well, I'm so glad that you were able to come. Um, I know that you're just kind of starting out, so you do have an Instagram and a LinkedIn. People can reach out to you there. Also. Linkedin people can reach out to you there. Also an email address. Why don't you let people know where's like the best way, the number one best way for people to reach out to you, valerie.

Valerie : 18:48

I would say it's Instagram and my Instagram handle is Haitian underscore V, that is, haitian H-A-I-T-I-A-N underscore V.

Aubrey: 19:03

That's super easy, and thanks so much for joining. If anybody was really interested in this episode and me, you can find more about me at my website, wwwarttherapynccom, and you can also find more about this show on bizradious. Be sure to like and subscribe for more content. I'm Aubrey Baptiste, your host, and this is Valerie Bucard. Thanks again for joining.

Valerie : 19:32

Thank you, aubrey. Thank you for having me, you're welcome.