Jenelle Welch— Family Advocate, Community Mental Health Services

A Lighthouse to a Safe Harbor

“Utilizing her own experience and challenges, Jenelle conveys empathy, support and guidance to the families she works with. She has often given an extra visit or phone call to ensure linkages are made or to assist caregivers in making difficult choices regarding services for their children, and has identified creative ways of reaching the children we work with through storytelling and arts and crafts. She has always been a team player as well, and has implemented staff-building activities to increase the cohesiveness of our team.”

Jenelle Welch relies on a trio of skills for her job as a family advocate with VNSNY’s Brooklyn Child Mobile Crisis Team: her ability to get family members to open up, her knowledge of supportive city agencies, and her sense of humor. Once, when she found herself the only woman in an elevator full of men in a dangerous Brooklyn neighborhood, she turned to the guys and joked, “Don’t worry—I don’t bite.” Tension diffused.

In a typical referral, Jenelle and her psychiatric social worker partner will go to a school or home to deescalate a situation in which a child is acting out—frequently with suicidal or homicidal ideation or violence. While the social worker tends to the child, Jenelle works with the family members, who often are struggling themselves. She’s dealt with parents of children who are depressed, or have autism, and has even gotten help from the Adult Protective Services for a woman whose son shot her in the head. To get most people to open up, she simply has to ask, “And how is Mom [or Dad]?” “That usually gets the conversation going,” she says.

Before coming to VNSNY five years ago, Jenelle worked in foster care. “My focus, my love and my passion is always about the children,” she says. “Even though I don’t work directly with children now, I’m working with the most important person in their life—their parent. If I can help them understand their child’s illness or recognize that they need assistance themselves, then I’ve done a service for that child…and that makes me ecstatically happy.”