Betsy McAlister Groves to be SSW Commencement Speaker

Betsy McAlister Groves, MSW, LICSW, a BUSSW alumna and the founding Director of the Child Witness to Violence Project at Boston Medical Center, will be the Boston University School of Social Work Commencement speaker on May 18, 2008.

Betsy’s practice and research interests include the impact of community and family violence on young children and engaging community systems in identifying and responding to children who are affected by violence in their environments. The Child Witness to Violence Project provides developmentally informed, trauma-focused intervention to young children and their parents who are affected by violence and other traumas. It receives funding as a site in the National Child Traumatic Stress Network to test a model of psychotherapeutic intervention for children and to disseminate information about early childhood trauma to schools, health settings, and the criminal justice system.

Betsy holds academic appointments as Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine and as Lecturer at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. She also serves as Co-Director of the Child Protection Team at Boston Medical Center. She has served for the past 10 years on the Massachusetts Governor’s Council for Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. In addition, Betsy has served in various advisory and consultative capacities for the US Department of Justice and the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. She has published extensively on topics related to childhood trauma and intervention, including a book, Children who See Too Much: Lessons from the Child Witness to Violence Project (2002).

Betsy received her master’s degree from Boston University School of Social Work in 1975 and her undergraduate degree from the College of William and Mary. She is the past recipient of a fellowship from the Open Society Institute and was a fellow at the Malcolm Weiner Center of Social Policy at Harvard University in 1999-2000.