Jenean Castillo, Ph.D.

Position: Assistant Director, Child Welfare Services 

Affiliation: Westchester Institute for Human Development (WIHD) 

Jenean A. Castillo, Ph.D., is a New York State Licensed Psychologist, the Assistant Director of Child Welfare Services, Diversity and Inclusion Coordinator at WIHD, a 2015 Diversity and Inclusion Fellow for the Association of University Centers on Excellence in Disabilities (AUCD), a LEND faculty member and a former LEND trainee at WIHD. She is also an Assistant Professor of Practice in Disability and Human Development in the School of Health Sciences and Practice at New York Medical College.

Dr. Castillo co-developed and manages the Every Family Counts Aftercare Program, which provides intensive in-home and community-based services to all families in Westchester County who are reuniting after regular foster care placement in order to maintain safety and permanency. She conducts and oversees programs for children and families in foster care including evaluations as well as direct clinical and therapeutic services. In addition, Dr. Castillo supervises and trains graduate and post-graduate students, including LEND trainees. In her capacity as Diversity and Inclusion Coordinator, Dr. Castillo is responsible for WIHD's LEND linguistic and cultural competency curriculum development and implementation.

Dr. Castillo's current research activities include a program evaluation of the Aftercare Program and examining the psychological profiles of children in foster care. She is also an evaluator for a federally funded program, Project LAUNCH, which seeks to promote healthy development of young children birth to age eight.

Interests

Dr. Castillo's interests include family systems, child development, child welfare, trauma, child maltreatment, culture and tradition, teaching and mentoring, and research and program evaluation.