Bridging the Gap Counseling and Educational Services
Sisters Pamela Denise Poteat and Terry Poteat Carter have blended their talents into a special mix of counseling, therapy, and education. They rely on their education, their extensive research, and their rich experience for this unique pathway through stabilization and healing for families, individuals, adoptees, couples, teenagers, and children
. Individual Experience
Pamela: My husband and I have adopted twice, once from overseas and the other a domestic adoption. They have two sons who were both nine years of age when adopted. They have also been foster parents for the last twelve years and have taken children beginning at age five and teens going all the way through age sixteen. The beauty of this background is I can speak to trauma and attachment issues from real life experiences in their homes. Terry: As an educational therapist specializing in students coming from trauma backgrounds, I have recently joined Pamela’s practice after retiring from the NC Public Schools. I am fluent in Spanish and French, which has proved pivotal in working with families who have adopted internationally. For the last eleven years of my teaching career, I worked with wounded students from poverty backgrounds who attended inner city schools. Corporate Experience
Working together as sisters is not a new experience to either of us. When Pamela and her husband adopted their first son from Russia, he had attended little school and could neither read nor write in Russian. After failing third grade twice, she was told that she might have to be satisfied if he did not graduate from high school but received a certificate of attendance. Horrified, she called her sister; she came to Nashville to test Serguey in order to diagnose the source of his learning issues. Together they put together a one-year intense, home-school program to get Serguey closer to grade level so he could attend a school with his peers. After one year, he was on grade level in English Language Arts and above grade level in mathematics. Although they were intentional and creative in their efforts, the rewiring of his brain and the ability to work autonomously was attributable most to his feeling safe and subsequently attaching. Pamela also used these same strategies to work with multiple foster children who had extensive behavioral and learning issues. She saw significant strides while each was in her home. Two of the children that were diagnosed with Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome when entering her home, underwent testing at Vanderbilt University; each of their IQs came up 20 points in a year’s time. Terry and Pamela received encouragement to put this program to use with children outside their family who had similar issues to Pamela’s adopted sons, foster children, and the students Terry taught in NC. By the grace of God, they started a nonprofit company, Total Learning Concepts, through which they ministered to children and teenagers in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. They were both bi-vocational as they led this ministry; in addition, they worked without compensation. Working through the public school system in McDowell County for nine years, they reached over 250 students who learned to survive and thrive in the public school system. They started each of the nine years with a Brain Boosting Summer Boot Camp where they were able to develop deep, safe relationships with the students, work through the trauma in their lives, and help reorganize their brains for learning. Tutors and mentors used a customized program they developed to tutor the students year-round. They provided coaching in the Parent/Student Academy that they established. Each year ended with a rally to show what they had learned and demonstrated on the cumulative, end of year tests (called End of Grade Tests in NC). Their students went from a 20% to an 85-90% success rate on these tests and in the classroom. Whole families changed as they ministered to the parents and siblings of their students. They still get messages to Ms. Terry telling us what they are reading or how well they are doing in school. I take the time to explain this background because I would like you to know how they have lived what they believe about trauma and attachment healing. Healing hurting families has long been a passion and a calling for us. Current Counseling Process
In addition to working with children/teens adopted domestically, they have worked with children/teens from Colombia, Peru and Ethiopia. They also counsel via Skype with adoptive families in several states. At any given time, 30-40% of their work is with adoptive families. Another 10-20% is with children and teens from blended families, divorce, foster families, and single parent families. These children and teens have traumatized brains, attachment issues, cumulative cognitive deficit, and poor executive functioning skills, having been diagnosed with ADHD, OCD, ODD, and even Tourette’s syndrome. Many parents fear that their children are autistic because of their lack of empathy and poor social skills when in actuality they are dealing with trauma and attachment issues. STABILIZATION PROCESS
*Evidence-based Practices such as Trust Based Relational Intervention (TBRI); Attachment, Self-regulation, Competency (ARC); Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT); Circle of Security, Parents as Tender Healers (PATH, Tennessee Model for Foster Parenting); Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control (Heather Forbes); Traumatized, Impoverished and Fragile Brain Training by Eric Jensen; Center for Cognitive-Developmental Assessment and Remediation Training (Boris Gin-dis, Ph.D.); Framework for Poverty by Ruby Payne; Feuerstein's Instrumental Enrichment (FIE)
**Midline Therapy, Bonding Rituals and Routines, Problem Solving Tools, Calming Strategies, Analytical Sequencing Activities
Healing Process
*Some of elements from the above modalities continue as the child/teen heals. They begin to work toward improvement of cognitive processes, executive functions, and self-regulation. The child/teen keeps his/her own trigger logs in order to recognize and regulate his/her own emotions. They help their young clients reframe the trauma in their lives so they can understand their worth as human beings and to their new family. Last in the healing process, the child/teen writes (or has a scribe for) his/her testimony to present to others. They have decided to call their business Bridging the Gap Counseling and Educational Services. This title is descriptive of the process they use to walk families through pain, trauma, and attachment. They bridge the gap between where families are (chaos) and where they want to be (stabilized). They take them one step further to healing, which many families can never even imagine. They feel blessed that families allow us to speak into their lives and walk with them through this process. These troubled families do not only need a counselor but someone who ministers to them as they walk this journey, someone who has previously walked that journey herself. Their approach, although including elements of many well-known modalities, is more important-ly compassionate, hands-on, intuitive, and intentional, the combination of knowledge and life experience with a willingness to get into the deep pits and hard places along with their clients. All these elements, along with the experience, culminate into a results-oriented program that is dynamic and flexible for each family’s needs. Note from Terry and Pamela:
We are currently taking new clients. Thank you for reading this rather lengthy summary of their work and for giving us the opportunity to further their ministry to hurting families. Please let us know if you have any further concerns or need further information before recommending families to us. Fees:
Therapeutic Parenting $75.00/hour (approximately 10 two-hour sessions)
Adoptive Families $125.00/hour* Educational Therapy $75.00/hour
Personal Data Inventory $125.00 Developmental Assessment $125.00
All Other Testing $95.00/hour
Individualized Assignments/Activities for Children/Teens $65.00/assignment (CBT and perception realignment driven)
*Included are analysis of Trigger Logs, email response within 24 hours, and hands on therapy combination with customized exercises/sensory activities and diet that support self-regulation/ application for critical thinking/perspective making; on call support from 7am-11pm, intermediate progress reports. Length of time for healing is based upon number of disruptions, chronicity and types/level of abuse. Most biblical counseling sessions last two hours, while most educational therapy sessions last one hour, sometimes with multiple sessions during the course of a week. In addition, they do group counseling and multiple family training sessions. References are available upon request.
