Fiona True, LMSW, is a faculty member of the Ackerman Institute for the Family and the Co-Director of Ackerman's Center for Children and Relational Trauma. She is also the Associate Director for International and Community Training. In this role she directs programs in Hong Kong, Chile, Argentina, Mexico and Japan, as well as in the New York metropolitan area.

For the last 15 years she has been a member of Ackerman's Making Families Safe for Children Project, a project that has developed a treatment program for families where intra-familial sexual abuse is the presenting problem. The project more recently developed a family based treatment model for adolescent boys who have offended.

Since 2004, Ms. True has been working on Ackerman's Relational Trauma Project. This project is translating what was learnt in the earlier work with incest to working with children and families who have experienced other forms of relational trauma such as witnessing domestic violence, the loss of a parent or bitter and contentious custody disputes.

She consults to numerous social service agencies including the Jewish Child Care Association concerning issues of sexual abuse in residential and foster care. In this role she has written and is implementing a protocol of programs and services to respond to the clinical needs of girls and boys with histories of either being abused or having abused others. Since September 11, 2001, she has been the leader of therapeutic groups at the Ackerman Institute for families who had relatives killed in the attack on the World Trade Center.

Ms. True has presented nationally and internationally, and in 2004 was the recipient of the AFTA Award for Distinguished Contribution to Family Therapy together with her colleagues Marcia Sheinberg and Peter Fraenkel.

She maintains a small private practice in Connecticut and Manhattan.

ftrue@ackerman.org

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