Dr. Joyce Radford
London Family Court Clinic (LFCC)
254 Pall Mall Street, Suite 200
London, ON N6A 5P6
Telephone: (519) 679-7250, ext. 114
Email: joyce.radford@lfcc.on.ca
Clinical interests: I have worked with adolescents for the majority of my career and, in particular, with marginalized youth. For the past 22 years, I have worked at LFCC with court involved young people in the London and surrounding county area, conducting psychological assessments (Section 34 reports) for youth court. I have also been involved in research with high-risk youth. In the past few years this has involved the development and implementation of a modified DBT program for high-risk youth as well as a virtual DBT program using an asynchronous model. Prior to my time at LFCC, I conducted interviews with street youth from across Canada, working to understand their sexual attitudes, knowledge and behaviours for the Street Youth and AIDS Study (Queen’s University) and, as well, have worked in a similar capacity with HIV infected youth in Toronto. As such, much of my work has included research as well as assessment and clinical intervention with high-needs and high-risk youth. My training and clinical work has largely been informed by a psychodynamic approach and attachment theory. My psychological assessment work for court purposes is also trauma informed with a forensic lens, and an awareness of the Justice System and the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) is critical to my practice.
Topics for workshops, seminars: Mental health concerns and risk factors related to youth in conflict with the law; Youth Court in Ontario and new initiatives including therapeutic court and mental health diversion programs; Sexual behaviour problems in youth—interviewing challenges and assessment practices; DBT with high-risk youth, program considerations and efficacy of modified DBT programming.
Type of clinical practica: Advanced assessment practica (Clinical, Counselling and Health Psychology)
Types of clients: Adolescents
Modality: Individual; Family
Theoretical orientation: Psychodynamic; Eclectic; Cognitive; Family systems
Types of client problems: Intellectual disability; ADHD; Communication/Learning disorder; Impulse control; PTSD; Adjustment disorder; Reactive attachment disorder; Anxiety disorders; Bipolar & related disorders; Disassociative disorders; Depressive disorders; Schitz & other psychotic disorders; Disrupt. impulse & conduct disorders; Personality disorders
Type of supervision you can provide: Student describes case; Co-therapy/Co interview; You observe student live
Recent students:
Current students:
Clinical Mentor: Available
Research interests: I have previously been involved in a number of research activities and community-based program evaluation projects. My experience includes National survey research with youth as well as program development and evaluation projects related to improving services for youth as well as high-risk families of young children. General areas of interest at this time would include service development for high-risk youth, youth in the justice system and qualitative research methods. I have been involved in the past 6 years with two projects funded by the the Local Poverty Reduction Grant. As youth living in poverty are represented in the court system an estimated 10 times higher than in the general youth population, these projects offered opportunity to respond to the current and future needs of court involved youth. The first of these projects allowed us to more clearly understand the characteristics of young people in the justice system, and specifically, those factors that contribute to poverty (i.e., school dropout, lack of job skills, homelessness). In this project we workedl to improve young people’s access to services in the community through a specialized clinical team intervention, involving service coordinators. A follow-up project to this involved our attempt to reduce future poverty in the lives of youth by implementing a treatment intervention (DBT) in an effort to reduce the impact of trauma in their everyday lives and improve their prosocial involvements (i.e., jobs, school). Both of these Poverty Reduction grants, demonstrated the positive impact of these interventions. A third project that we are currently involved with through the Innovation Initiatives Grant is focused on creating DBT skills videos for high-risk youth, as a means of increasing the availability of a 10 week program. Overall, DBT has proven to be a very effective method for improving the coping skills of these young people.
Available to supervise: Yes
Constraints: Fall 2024 only.
Last updated: June 3, 2024
