Catherine Vaughan on supporting kids and the clinicians who care for them

“They know they can ask me anything.”

For Catherine Vaughan, that trust is at the heart of her work — with the children and teens she counsels, with the clinicians she supervises, and with the school partners who rely on River Valley Counseling Center’s school-based services every day.

As assistant director of school-based services for ServiceNet’s River Valley Counseling Center (RVCC), Vaughan helps lead a program that brings licensed outpatient therapists directly into schools across the Pioneer Valley. RVCC’s school-based services, she said, now serve about 2,400 children and teens in 11 districts and more than 75 schools, with a team of over 100 clinicians.

Vaughan joined the RVCC team nearly 12 years ago. Starting as a fee-for-service school-based clinician in Chicopee, she has steadily taken on more responsibility. Today, her job blends leadership, clinical care, and problem-solving. She oversees districts, coordinates with schools, supports staff, and maintains a small caseload of her own.

At noon on a recent Thursday, she had already seen two clients and was preparing for more therapy sessions, supervision meetings, and to work her way through a packed e-mail inbox. She directly supervises 18 people, many of whom are working toward licensure.

“It’s a lot of collaborating,” Vaughan said. “Helping them understand they’re on the right track. Letting them know, yes, this is hard — and yes, we can do this together.”

Vaughan encourages clinicians to ask questions freely and to be honest about what they don’t yet know. If she doesn’t have an answer herself, she says so.

“Why would I pretend I know something when I don’t?” she said.

For Vaughan, that kind of openness is both ethical and practical; it models for her clinicians the kind of honesty and continual learning that strong clinical work requires, especially in a field where needs are complex and emotional demands are high.

Vaughan said she comes from “a family of helpers.” Her mother was a nurse. Her father owned a hair salon before becoming a hospice and palliative care CNA. Her sister is a nurse and the CEO of a rehabilitation hospital in New Hampshire. Her brother worked as an EMT for years. In her family, she said, helping people was simply what you did.

Childhood experience, also, has shaped her journey. Her parents divorced when she was in first grade, and Vaughan saw a therapist at school who made a lasting impression.

“Her name was Verba,” Vaughan said, “And I loved her.”

She recalls how clearly Verba communicated with her, and how powerful it felt to learn words for emotions she had not known how to express.

“She gave me words to actually communicate how I was feeling,” Vaughan said. “I remember thinking: I want to do what Verba does.”

That impulse eventually led her to social work. She earned her undergraduate degree in social work at Rhode Island College, then returned to Western Massachusetts for Springfield College’s master’s in social work program. She liked the broader lens she learned to apply: not just focusing on an individual, but on the systems, relationships, and environments shaping a person’s life.

That perspective, she said, is especially well suited to school-based therapy with young people.

“Sometimes giving a kid a space for them to be themselves, and to have uninterrupted one-on-one time with an adult who cares, is enough,” Vaughan said. “It plants a seed.”

To learn more about River Valley Counseling’s School-Based Outpatient Therapy Services, call 413-540-1234 or click here.