A clinician who chose to see the children underneath.

C.P. Handler, MSW, LCSW. Trauma-informed clinician, author, speaker. Nearly sixteen years alongside the young people and adults our systems were built to hold, not heal.

Sixteen years behind the walls.

C.P. Handler is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with nearly 16 years of clinical experience providing trauma-informed care to incarceration-impacted youth and adults. Her career has taken her through juvenile and adult jails, methadone clinics, inner-city schools, residential treatment, and foster care. Today she serves as a crisis interventionist in the South Florida jail system.

Working inside juvenile detention, she met boys the system had already written off, and discovered the resilience, humor, loyalty, and hope that survive even there. The Light Within the Walls is her account of that world, and of the difference one trusted adult can make.

She holds a Master of Social Work (2010), is licensed in Florida, Michigan, and Ohio, and trains and consults internationally on trauma-informed practice.

“They see felons.
I see children.”

As a clinician, I spent years inside juvenile detention, building trust with young people the system had written off. Now I’m pulling back the curtain, determined to change how we see these kids.

Where the training meets the work.

Reaching children before the walls.

Working with at-risk youth in Cleveland, C.P. saw the same heartbreaking issues every day, the ones landing kids in detention and ruining their futures. She believed that if children could be reached younger, they could learn to get their needs met in healthy ways and carry those skills into adulthood.

In 2015 she co-founded Atideinu, Hebrew for “our future,” with Malka Leah and Murray Koval: an evidence-based social and emotional learning program for grades 4 through 8, grounded in Torah-based ethics and modern research. It opened with 15 children and grew 400% in three years, with support from the Mount Sinai Health Care Foundation for its proactive approach to mental health.

Watch the Atideinu story

“Emotional intelligence is a predictor of success in every area of life.”

Therapy, training and consultation.

C.P.’s private practice, based in Miami. Therapy for adults, parents and teens in Florida, Michigan and Ohio; EMDR and Brainspotting; and trainings for clinicians and organizations working inside systems, offered internationally.