Intersections of Clinical and Community Practice--Spotlight on Leora Hudak

“Nothing is ever purely macro- or micro-,” says Leora Hudak, second year clinical student.  “So social work is an ideal degree for anyone interested in working with international populations.”  Leora has been thinking about the fluidity of social work practice through different system levels all year in her internship with the Marjorie Kovler Center where she met for one-to-one therapy with asylum seekers and survivors of torture.  Often when we think about international social welfare, our minds jump to community development, advocacy, and policy formation; clinical practice isn’t often discussed.  Leora has been exploring the role of the clinician in the international social work field and described how her internship has enriched her understanding of this particular vocation.  

 The Marjorie Kovler Center falls under the Heartland Alliance umbrella: it provides clinical therapy to torture survivors who are seeking asylum status in the United States.  Clinicians meet with clients, often with a translator to interpret, to both help clients metabolize their trauma and to assist with asylum cases.  Asylum-seekers often need to prove that they are in legitimate danger if they return to their native countries, and the Kovler Center’s staff provide testimony for their clients.  As an intern, Leora maintained a caseload of about 10 clients from a diverse array of backgrounds.  “I loved that about the internship,” she said.  “On any given week I would see people from Congo, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Bosnia; it was a great experience in cross-cultural engagement.”  She was also wrote up psychological affidavits for her clients’ asylum applications and prepared for court testimony.  The internship allowed Leora to further her clinical training, learn how to advocate for clients in the legal system, and furthered her understanding of the importance of context for understanding individual resiliencies and vulnerabilities.  

Leora sees the dissemination of trauma-informed practice internationally as central to her role as a clinician in the international social work field.   The education of local practitioners in trauma-informed philosophy and methodology has significant implications for both individual and community transformation.   Integrating this model into community approaches to development and intervention will go a long way towards efforts of reconciliation and recovery, especially for those communities that have long suffered from violence.  Leora cited Heartland Alliance’s program in Colombia as an example for what can be possible with such an initiative: Heartland Alliance has been working with local psychologists to offer trauma-informed treatment on individual and community levels with a community whose population was displaced and relocated.  In this community, both survivors and perpetrators of violence were granted land and housing, so they must interact with each other daily.  Heartland Alliance’s program staff have risen to the challenge of treating all individuals and the community as a whole, and are seeing some amazing results.  “I feel like this kind of experience is only possible in the international context,” says Leora.  “It’s fascinating.” 

Her experience at the Marjorie Kovler Center has built upon Leora’s previous experiences with international populations, she volunteered with the Peace Corps in China for two years after college and spent last summer in Colombia working with victims of displacement.  She will continue this work with a two-year fellowship with The Center for Victims of Torture in Minneapolis/St. Paul.  There, her time will be split between providing counseling services and being part of a research team.  As part of that team, Leora will investigate differences in outcomes for SouthEast Asian populations who are treated either in culturally traditional  or medical settings.  “This position allows me to continue both my clinical practice and research,” says Leora.  “There’s not a lot of literature on how to do this kind of work internationally, so I feel that there’s a lot of room to contribute.”  We wish her all the best in her new position, and look forward to the contributions she will make to this emerging field.

To learn more about the Marjorie Kovler Center, visit their website at http://www.heartlandalliance.org/kovler/