Annie Ramniceanu has been contacted by SPIKE Advertising because they are working with the Vermont Department of Health  to create a series of web videos focused on underage drinking.   They approached Annie because she is regarded as “an expert in the field who would be a good fit with this campaign.”

That is great news for Annie, we are so proud of her at Spectrum, and good news for the youth and families of Vermont who will be receiving valuable and valid information from her in the near future via the web.

She has been accepted to Southern Vermont College in Bennington, VT.  She was also awarded $7,000 in scholarship funds!

Congratulations to Spectrum’s clinical director Annie Ramniceanu, who was invited by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to be a panelist at today’s summit in Washington, D.C.: Moving Forward: Transforming Behavioral Health Recovery in an Era of Health Care Reform.  The Summit took place at the Omni Shoreham Hotel and is designed to share and build on transformation and recovery-oriented systems change progress and to determine how best to sustain core recovery and transformation principles and outcomes to the planning and implementation of state and local health care reform initiatives.  Annie was invited to be on the Integrated Care and Supports panel.  We are very proud of her for being selected for this, it is further recognition of her expertise in this field.

Lynne Castro is a youth receiving services at Spectrum, and we are very proud of her.  She recently spent a day at the Legislature testifying in committee about youth homelessness, then another day shadowing a State Representative.

She also ran into our former Governor Jim Douglas, here is a nice shot of the two of them.

Please click the link below, provides important information about Human Trafficking, which unfortunately is a sad reality for the homeless youth we work with at Spectrum.  Our clinical director Annie Ramniceanu testified at the Vermont State Legislature recently about this.  It is something we should all be vigilant about.  We’d like to believe this kind of thing does not occur in America, much less Vermont, but it does.

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“Things with my mentee have been going great, and I wanted to update you with where we’re at.  He and I took a short walk after our meeting with his foster father last Monday.  We agreed that I would pick him up for lunch on Friday at noon.  Since he had expressed a little concern about finding his way around the high school and losing his schedule, I offered that we might want to begin our time on Friday with a visit to the high school to get a new copy of his schedule and then go on a self-guided tour.  He thought that would be a good idea, and so we spent about an hour touring Burlington H.S. (my old alma mater, too), getting a new schedule, and reconnecting with some of his old friends from Hunt Middle School who happened to be there for summer school.  He seems to know everyone, which will help him transition to the high school, I think.  Then, we had a nice lunch at the Olive Garden, one of his favorite spots (and mine, too.)  Yesterday, Monday, we went for dinner at the food court in U-Mall and went window-shopping.  When I picked him up, I had a chance to have a nice chat with his foster mom.  He and I made plans to meet again for dinner next Monday and then hang out at Barnes and Noble, another one of his favorite spots (and again, mine, too.)

I asked him if he’d like to commit to a mentor/mentee relationship for a year, and he said yes.  I agreed that I would also like to do so, so I will sign my Mentor Contract and return it to you.  When I stop in, could I pick up another copy of the contract for him?  (He can’t find his copy.  Typical 14-year-old boy, huh?)  I said I would get him another one and give it to him Monday when we meet again.

You’re right: he’s a GREAT guy, and I look forward to connecting with him as his mentor.  I have already learned a lot from him!”

Our friends at Sugarbush gave us an all-expenses-paid day on the slopes on January 26^th.  Spectrum was able to take 4 youth from our Residential programs and one staff to Sugarbush for the day. It was a perfect day for them to learn how to ski and snowboard and they received VIP attention and personal instruction from amazing instructors. Sugarbush’s Chris Clements and Gretchen Ackland organized and supported the program and we cannot thank them enough! A thank you also goes out to Patrick Farnsworth, Coop Case Manager who volunteered to be the chaperone for the day. Spectrum will be taking more youth to Sugarbush on two more occasions on Feb 16^th and March 16^th.  Pasted below is a picture of Patrick with Jesse and Jordan.

Vermont State Auditor Tom Salmon, and his wife Leslie, donate to us and sent this note recently:

Dear Mark and all at Spectrum,

Thank you for your service and dedication to Vermonters.  Your successes (full effort= success) and commitment to continuous improvement are greatly appreciated.  This is difficult work, but it’s worth it, and necessary, because as Arthur Miller writes, “They are all our sons (and daughters).”

Spectrum’s drop-in/outreach program is funded by the Vermont Dept of Health to do HIV-prevention for the youth we serve.  Recently we heard from staff at DOH, and they said we reached 46 youth out of a goal of 48, and 34 of those completed the class – a 74% completion rate. They are really impressed with our work and said that our numbers are some of the best in the state. In fact, they said that Spectrum’s numbers are what make the state of Vermont look good to the federal Centers for Disease Control.

This is a great tribute to the leadership of this program, including Annie Ramniceanu, Bridget Everts,  and Lauren Vessella.  It is because of them, and their staff, that we are accomplishing so much and receive recognition like this.

We asked several of our community partners to give us feedback on what they think of the work Spectrum staff do preventing domestic violence.  Here are the responses, which to me are very validating.  We truly have amazing staff at Spectrum doing heroic work.   (FYI – DAEP stands for Domestic Abuse Education Program.)

• I don’t know how uplifting this is, but working with survivors of domestic violence, I am always slightly amused by how often I hear from them that their batterer would rather be in jail than go to DAEP because they have such a hard time with being held accountable. It makes the women I work with feel good that a program is telling them their behavior and underlying beliefs are not okay, often when they feel the court system does not send the same message.

• DAEP is a key part of our Coordinated Community Response.  Survivors of domestic violence JUST want the violence to stop and for their abusive partners to get help.  When DAEP is mentioned to survivors, most express a deep interest in the program.  It’s viewed as a glimmer of hope – that this program could help to make the violence stop.  DAEP is an invaluable service.  It’s a crucial program geared towards ending the violence that plagues our communities.  Thanks for the amazing work you all do.

• As a member of our DV task force, I have found that DAEP is a vital part of supporting our community’s children and families to staying safe.  The coordinator of our local DAEP has been a strong community partner to our agency and we greatly value that relationship as domestic violence impacts the work we do every day.

• The first thing I think of is how long it took, it sometimes feels, for the battered women’s movement to begin to recognize that DAEP programs are true allies in the effort to end violence against women. I am not sure if that how it feels to you now, but I see it that way. For so long we poured financial, legal, and advocacy resources into sheltering and protecting women from men who batter, without addressing the cultural incubator for men who learn to believe in their entitlement and their right to use violence.

• When thinking about your work of  I am reminded of two great quotes: 

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”   Alexander Solzhenitsyn

and Rev. Martin Luther King: ” Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.” 

• When I first came to Vermont I was aware of this lingering skepticism about batterer’s intervention.  I was used to a different model, where the victim services program also provided the batterer’s intervention program, so I have always been a proponent of batterers’ intervention.  In my time here, I have seen a noticeable shift towards a much more hopeful attitude about batterer’s intervention in Vermont.  There is more consensus that batterers intervention is a key part of the formula to end domestic violence. 

• In many ways your work in batterers’ intervention is harder than victim services.  When women come to us, they are ready, or at least much closer to being ready.  But the guys you work with are usually very far away from being motivated to act differently.  I appreciate all the work you do, and the great sense of collaboration you embody.  It is clear that we have a shared vision and commitment to perpetrator accountability and victim safety. 

• I am grateful to those who have committed time, energy, passion, and intellect to understanding how to work with individual men who must unlearn this core belief in their entitlement.  Because it is in working with individual people that the world will change. And that too, I am thankful for–working with men who batter, I think you have to have an optimism–a belief in the human ability to change, grow, adapt–in order to work alongside men who have hurt their partners and children in such profound ways. You have to be strong enough to hear all that hurt, smart enough to sift through the layers of excuses, and kind enough to believe in the potential that lies in every human heart for remorse, and reparation. That makes you amazing people–and I have learned, and continue to learn much from you.