Marcie Weatherspoon

Marcy Witherspoon, MSW, LSW has been a pillar of the Philadelphia social work community for forty years.  She joined the staff at HFP several years ago after working for the organization as a consultant for over a decade. She provides training, coaching, and consultation for myriad disciplines including health care providers, educators, and social service providers, with a focus on trauma-informed practice.  Marcy provides individualized attention to her clients in her training and consultation sessions, often incorporating storytelling to make an emotional connection with others. She has worked locally and nationally in schools, hospitals, and community-based organizations and also serves as the family violence specialist for the Ambulatory Health Services Division of the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. She entered the field of social work to improve the health, safety, and well-being of individuals, families, and communities and is particularly interested in addressing the manner in which early childhood experiences shape the individuals we become. This interest has led to her focus on addressing and intervening with family violence through positive parenting strategies and disseminating information about the traumatic effects that toxic stress can have on long-term social, emotional and cognitive development.  She is especially interested in providing support and developing integrated practices to reduce and eventually eliminate inequities in health care, child welfare, education, and other major systems and bureaucracies that have been established to heal, and not harm.