Name: Allen W. Ratcliffe

Location: Tacoma, WA 

Name of workplace: Actively Retired

Title: Community Psychologist 

E-mail: alratcliffe@gmail.com

Website: None

How would you prefer to be contacted? Email or telephone

In which of the following formats would you be interested in sharing your account? (mark all that apply):

Website           Book               Journal             No preference

Which of the following formats would you be willing to complete? (mark all that apply):

Videotaped interview             Telephone Interview               Longer questionnaire No preference

Please describe your primary work including the setting and primary focus of your work:

 I work in a variety of natural community settings: homeless kitchen, AIDS Foundation, police and sheriff departments, Tacoma Human Services Commission, Tacoma Urban Network Board, Homeless Coalition, and the community mental health administrative board that covers Pierce County.  My primary focus is on trying to help improve services to persons who are homeless, surviving in poverty, and/or challenged by mental illness. 

In these various settings, I help develop policies and strategies for improving service coordination and delivery.  I have chosen settings that seem to need stronger linkages, and I encourage the identification and measurement of desirable and meaningful outcomes.

Clinically, I focus on trauma impacts in law enforcement and in survivors of abuse-trauma.

Please describe any other work or projects that you do as a community psychologist (paid or volunteer):
With the exception of services to law enforcement, all of my activities now are volunteer.  I am "actively retired' and freed from needing an office or managed care contracts.  Therefore, I can focus on "giving back" to my community.

What training do you have in community psychology? What helped prepare you for this career? 
I received my Ph.D. in 1964 and never heard of community psychology.  I learned about community mental health while serving as a clinical psychologist in the Army.  I learned about community psychology when I attended a workshop that Don Klein and James Rouse conducted on the development of Columbia, MD.  I attended the Austin Biennial conference.  Mostly, I just started going out into the community and trying to be helpful.  After a while, people decided I could actually be helpful.

Please list any professional affiliations:
 APA - life member, WA State Psychological Association.

Other comments or other information relevant to your work as a community practitioner: -