 |
Please Note: The following biographies of the four originators of the Circle of Security™ Project are in alphabetical order. Our work is an equal collaboration on the part of all four members.
Glen Cooper | Kent Hoffman | Bob Marvin | Bert Powell
Glen Cooper
Glen Cooper has been passionately involved in social services for over thirty years. His life experiences, which range from working and living in a homeless shelter in downtown Los Angeles to more than ten years as a treatment foster parent, speak to his enthusiasm and commitment. Glen has been a therapist in private practice since 1982 and has a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology from Gonzaga University. In addition to being licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist and a Mental Health Counselor, he is a designated Child Mental Health Specialist.
Glen has extensive training in Family Therapy, Object Relations theory and, for the past 14 years, he has been studying and consulting with internationally recognized authorities in the field of infant attachment and human development. In his undergraduate work at the University of California, Irvine, Mr. Cooper focused on experimental education and the education of young children. He has worked as a teacher and director of a nonprofit preschool for low-income children, a therapist for sexually abused children, and has, for the past 15 years, served as a mental health consultant for Spokane Head Start.
Mr. Cooper has served as the site director for federally funded Head Start research projects with the University of Virginia. He is a consultant for a NIMH grant for at-risk infants through the University of Maryland, a SAMSA grant for mothers in prison through the City of Baltimore, a DHHS grant for teenage mothers through Tulane University, and a Paul Allen grant to introduce evidence based practice for infant and toddlers to the judicial system, child protective services and community services providers in Spokane. He also is a consultant to the Children’s Ark, a local program for parents and infants in the child protection system. Glen and his colleagues received the Governor’s Child Abuse Prevention Award for their work in the Circle of Security™ Project. Glen is frequently invited to speak at conferences where both national and international audiences highly rate his presentation style for it’s warmth, humor and ability to present complex material in a manner that is engaging and accessible.
Glen has been married for 32 years and has two adult daughters. As foster parents and later as their own children were growing up, Glen and his wife, Christine, both worked part time so that each could participate fully in parenting. Glen considers this day-to-day experience of being at home with children one of the joys of his life and an important foundation for his clinical work.
[Go back to top]
|
Kent Hoffman
Kent Hoffman received his doctorate in 1975 from the Claremont Graduate School of Theology focusing upon an interface between existential psychology (Kierkegaard, Camus, Frankl) and the human search for connection and social justice within a spiritual context (Merton, Tillich, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day). Working with psychiatric patients in prison, individuals with terminal cancer, survivors of sexual abuse, and the homeless on the streets of Los Angeles became the focus of his next decade. In the mid-1980’s Kent began a post-doctoral certification program in psychoanalytic psychotherapy with the Masterson Institute of New York City. Something shifted. This introduction to object relations, attachment theory and developmental psychopathology allowed a much-needed framework for beginning to understand the centrality of early relationships in the creation of the “primitive agonies” (Winnicott) he had recently been exploring. From that time, Kent has dedicated himself to creating methodology specifically designed to support the healthy development of infants and young children. It is his belief that research-based and proven effective models of intervention for those at-risk in their earliest years can reduce unnecessary suffering and lead to lasting social change.
As one of the originators of the Circle of Security™ Project, Kent’s current focus is on the application of this model to homeless/street dependent teenage mothers, fathers and their infants. He is currently leading a variety of groups for teen parents in an attempt to explore new and increasingly effective approaches to the unique struggles faced within this high-risk population.
As a practicing Catholic and, simultaneously a student of Zen meditation and contemplative prayer over the past 30 years, Kent is continually seeking ways to make available a genuine integration of psychological needs and spiritual practice. (“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to you . . .over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”- Mary Oliver)
Dr. Hoffman is a clinical consultant for attachment related interventions at the University of Maryland, University of Virginia, Tulane University, and Tamar’s Children (a project in Baltimore, MD utilizing Circle of Security™ interventions with incarcerated mothers). He is also on the psychology faculty at Gonzaga University and is a training and supervising psychotherapist with the Center for Clinical Intervention at Marycliff Institute in Spokane, Washington. Kent was recently given the Child Advocate of the Year Award by Spokane Head Start and the Washington Children’s Alliance. He is a clinical member of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, the Society for Research in Child Development, and the International Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies.
Kent and his wife Kim live in the hills outside of Spokane and have a son who is currently attending Seattle University.
[Go back to top]
|
Bob Marvin
Always fascinated with babies and young children, Bob Marvin began his work in attachment in 1964 as one of Mary Ainsworth’s undergraduate students at The Johns Hopkins University, serving as one of the home visitors in Ainsworth’s now-famous “Baltimore Study,” and assisting in running Strange Situations and coding the home visit data. Throughout his graduate work at the University of Chicago and his early years on the psychology faculty at the University of Virginia, Dr. Marvin conducted basic research on developmental changes in attachment, parent-child relationships, and children’s communication skills.
Since 1980, Bob has served on the faculty in the departments of Pediatrics and Psychiatry at the University of Virginia. His work has focused since then on studying and treating attachment and other relationship problems in families who have children with chronic medical conditions, and more recently children who have been separated from their parents because of divorce, maltreatment, or foster and adoptive care. Dr. Marvin has been involved in developing and testing a number of research and clinical procedures for assessing attachment and caregiving behavior, has published widely in these areas of research and practice, and conducts workshops on these topics both nationally and internationally.
One of the most exciting parts of Bob’s career began in 1991, when he began working with the other creators of the Circle of Security™ (COS) Project to develop an evidence-based intervention for high-risk parents and children that is truly based on attachment theory and other research on early parent-child relationships. He has served as the Principal Investigator on two of the federally-funded studies to develop the COS protocol, is a co-investigator on the Tulane University COS project, and consults on other projects that use the protocol. Over the past five years, he has helped develop a number of programs in the Commonwealth of Virginia that are designed to improve Best Practices in the field of Child Welfare, especially foster and adoption services. From the Mary D. Ainsworth Child-Parent Attachment Clinic at the University of Virginia, he continues to train a wide range of professionals, as well as conducting clinical research, assessments, and intervention. When not working, he and his wife enjoy playing with their two children, five grandchildren, and their boat on the Chesapeake Bay.
[Go back to top]
|
Bert Powell
After graduating with a Masters Degree in Behavioral Science from Whitworth College, Bert Powell started his clinical work as an outpatient family therapist in a community mental health center in 1974. For the next 12 years he provided service to a wide variety of high-risk families, supervised a project on a family therapy approach for the treatment of child abuse and neglect, became a designated Child Mental Health Specialist for the State of Washington and received extensive training in Structural Family Therapy through the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic. During this period he also became the mental health center’s training supervisor organizing workshops and seminars for a staff of 300. He served as an advisor to the Washington State Department of Professional Licensing during the creation of the first set of administrative rules for the certification of Marriage and Family Therapists in the state.
Upon entering private practice Bert developed a specialty in couples therapy and began to focus upon the origins of intimacy. This lead to a comprehensive study of object relations theory, attachment theory and developmental psychopathology. In 1991 he graduated from the Masterson Institute of New York City with a certification in psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
As one of the originators of the Circle of Security™ Project, Bert has been exploring the clinical applications of attachment theory for individual, couple and family therapy as well as research on early intervention. In addition to his private practice he also provides consultation to the Spokane Police Department and the Spokane Public School’s Behavioral Intervention Program regarding the utilization of attachment theory and principles of affect regulation with at-risk youth.
Bert is an Approved Supervisor in the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Counseling Psychology at Gonzaga University and an International Advisor to the Editorial Board of the Journal of Attachment and Human Development. He, along with his colleagues, received the 2000 Washington State Governor's Child Abuse Prevention Award by Governor Gary Locke and The Washington Council for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect and is currently partnering in research grants regarding the Circle of Security™ for high-risk parent/child dyads with the University of Virginia, the University of Maryland, Tulane University, Louisiana State University, the City of Baltimore/Department of Corrections, Head Start/Early Head Start, the Washington Council for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, and the Perinatal Unit at Saint John of God’s Hospital in Perth, Australia.
Bert and his wife Sandy have been married for thirty-six years and their family home on Long Lake has become the designated “retreat” site for a wide variety of national and international developmental researchers and clinicians who consistently visit Spokane to participate in COS related activities.
[Go back to top]
|
|
|
The Circle of Security™ Project integrates over fifty years of attachment research into video-based intervention
|
