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Servant Leadership Snapshot

Devereux’s talented and hard-working team members lead to serve, while inspiring others to learn and grow. Our “Servant Leadership Snapshot” series shines a light on exemplary servant leaders across our organization who empower all those around them to be their best selves. Look below to read features written by these compassionate collaborators as they help their teams, programs, departments and centers reach even greater heights through Servant Leadership.

  

Ana Paula Castro, Clinician Ana Paula Castro

Center/office location: Devereux Colorado - Denver and Westminster

Length of service: June 2020

How do you embed an inclusive, Servant Leadership mindset into your daily processes?

My work as a marriage and family therapist involves serving children, adolescents, adults and families in single-parent families, blended families and foster families, as well as families facing difficult socio-economic stressors, struggling with mental health and behavioral issues and complex trauma. The purpose of my job is to find the strengths in these families that they have lost sight of along the way. It is especially important to listen for accomplishments and areas of strength that may not have been openly valued and recognized. The families I work with are facing such significant challenges that some of them are partially paralyzed by fear - they are afraid they don’t know how to change. My job is to intervene, establish trust and relate to them from a non-judgmental perspective. I enable families to build new muscles and help them stay together. I serve their needs first, working for them within their family values, and using my professional skills for their benefit.

How do you inspire others to embrace Servant Leadership practices?

I inspire others by demonstrating what Servant Leadership looks like: wanting to serve, and to serve first. By helping to support my team, and the two Devereux Colorado programs I work in, I feel proud to be able to serve my community. I am gratified that my willingness to jump in and help out wherever I am needed has been noticed and applauded by my supervisors. I aim to embrace new challenges, such as beginning work in our Day School program, with an openness, willingness and belief that new work will lead to new skills!

Share an example or story of how you demonstrated compassion or delivered quality customer service at your center.

We started a new Treatment Foster Care (TFC) program at Devereux Colorado, in partnership with Denver Human Services. We received our first referral case in November 2020, and I volunteered to work with the family. A girl had been removed from her home seven times and had been to multiple out-of-home residential placements. The child had a history of significant developmental trauma, and I came to understand that so did her mother. Despite these challenges, I embraced the case with the support of my supervisors. I facilitated intense home-based family therapy, specialized support, psychoeducational training, and I advocated, in multidisciplinary team meetings, for the family and the girl. After six months, the family was successfully reunited. I built such a great connection with them, they asked me to continue to provide services, even after the TFC part of the case had ended. I continue to facilitate therapeutic services for the family, and the child remains living at home. I am proud of my contributions in helping to turn the family’s experience into a positive one. It took an incredible amount of hard work, but I felt encouraged and supported throughout the process. The case is exactly why I entered this field.