Co-Director: Marcia Sheinberg, LCSW
Co-Director: Fiona True, LMSW

Ackerman Institute for the Family has long recognized the importance of the family as a major source of healing and resilience in overcoming trauma. Over the past 15 years, the Institute's Making Families Safe for Children Project has focused on the trauma of childhood sexual abuse, significantly changing the way sexual abuse is addressed by mental health professions, the courts, and others.

In 2004, Marcia Sheinberg and Fiona True, together with their colleague Peter Fraenkel, were the recipients of the AFTA Award for Distinguished Contribution to Family Therapy for their work in this project.

Following its extraordinary success in helping children and families deal with the trauma of sexual abuse, the Making Families Safe for Children Project has expanded and adapted its therapeutic treatment model to include children and families coping with other kinds of life-altering trauma, creating the Center for Children and Relational Trauma.

Relational trauma includes, but is not limited to family violence, sexual abuse, chronic illness, premature death, and family separation; all of which requires the involvement of the entire family if any therapeutic intervention is to be successful.

The consequences of these and other traumas can be profound and manifold. Many traumas endured by children—incest and domestic violence most notably—often recur in families across generations and especially require substantial therapeutic intervention to interrupt.