Deborah Skalabrin, MSW

Deb provided therapy for our son for over 5 years. She not only helped him but helped our entire family. The strategies she taught helped us tremendously! Deb’s services were life changing.

Several years ago, we had the opportunity to work with Deb. We were looking for assistance with our daughters who both had sensory integration and social regulation challenges. Deb provided us tools to help them understand how to manage sensory overload, reduce anxiety in certain situations and flourish with the innate skills and talents they both had. As a parent also with sensory sensitivity, I found her approaches meaningful and instructive. She provided tools that anyone can use and help for parents as well. She's a strong advocate for anyone on the spectrum, and leads her practice with kindness and professionalism. Our family is better off thanks to her input.

As an adult who visited Deborah Skalabrin as a pre-teen for a number of emotional control related issues, I've come to recognize that my experience with her was overall a very harmful one with a lasting negative impact. It's entirely possible she's revised her practices since, but at the time, she seemed far more concerned with shaming me into good behavior and obedience to my parents than about the mutual respect required for a healthy relationship with a social worker. At best, it felt like she was often infantilizing me and at worst it felt like she was trying to impose some sort of old-fashioned disciplinarian structure on our household. I've also learned in recent years that she is heavily involved with Autism Speaks, an organization that folks with autism have come forward to describe as built on a foundation of very thinly veiled ableism and coming from a place of denigrating the autistic community in the guise of speaking for it in an empowering way.

Deb was a wonderful counselor for our children. She encouraged and challenged them as well as gave much needed support to me and my partner.

Deb has seriously saved us! After being on waitlists forever to get in with different therapists and spending a few months with one who could never get my son to talk to her, we finally got in with Deb and I don't know where we'd be today if she hadn't squeezed us in! Deb has a special gift of communicating and connecting with children. I wish I had a fraction of her patience and skill! The time and love she put in with our son and family is priceless. THANK YOU DEB!

When I started looking for someone to help my son, I called around 6 different places, of those places only 2 ever called me back. One to tell me she didn't help young children and Deborah. Deborah then perceeded to talk to me for 30 minutes. From our first appt Deborah changed our lives! My son went from a 10 year-old who had never spent a full night in his bed to sleeping all night in his own bed after just one appt!