Christine Cohen

I am a licensed psychologist and licensed specialist in school psychology with 30+ years of experience in psychological evaluation, counseling, special education programming, and training.  During my career in public schools, I developed and published an anti-bullying curriculum, the goal of which was to create a supportive community for autistic students, as well as LGBTQIA+ plus students and others who were marginalized for various reasons.  Based on empowering bystanders, students participating in the pilot program completed over 4000 interventions on behalf of victims of bullying.

I began working with autistic students in 1996, just as the field was beginning to develop and identification of autism was becoming a conceptual spectrum.  I followed many children/students from the age of three until graduation (ages 18-22), and worked to help both their teachers and their families understand their enormous potential, as well as the challenges these students faced in school and in the broader community.  I've worked also  to remove barriers to inclusion and full participation in those arenas.  Working with autistic people of all ages has pushed me to grow as a clinician and to trust their experience in helping them to moved forward along their chosen paths.

It's incumbent on any clinician to see the strengths in a client that they may not see in themselves.  The process of beginning to identify areas of strengths and weakness, and to both understand potential roadblocks and possible ways forward is one of the underpinnings of the evaluation process.  The affirmation of client experience (as the expert in his/her own story) and the assumption of strengths (because we all have them) is a core responsibility of the evaluator.