Janet Blackburn, LCSW, LCD, Director of Clinical Services
As Director of Clinical Services, Janet Blackburn oversees the Directors of the Family, Adult, Weekend, Intern, and Activities Therapy programs, working closely with each department to coordinate care.
Janet started at La Hacienda Treatment Center in July 1992 as a case manager for professionals. Her second year she directed the Family Program before taking on her current role in 1995.
These days much of her time is spent with administrative duties, but she is still a counselor at heart. She likes to help her staff discover their talents and strengths. She is dedicated to investing in their professional growth because that, in turn, improves the care of the patients.
Called to Her Work
Janet has a long history working in addiction treatment. “Thankfully, I was introduced to sobriety in high school through an alternative peer group.” Finding recovery early turned into a calling which is as rewarding to her today as it was in the beginning. “The opportunity and ability to do what I do is God-given,” she says.
During her college and graduate school years, Janet counseled adolescents and worked with children in the school system and in foster care. Janet notes that substance use problems are frequently on the periphery in social services. “Anywhere you’re helping people in need, chances are you will find addiction.”
Janet is a Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor as well as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. She credits the University of Colorado at Boulder for her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and the University of Kansas and the University of Nebraska for her Master’s Degree in Social Work.
Regaining Hope, Rebuilding Relationships
What Janet enjoys most about her work is “watching people regain hope for their lives and rebuilding relationships–putting back together the pieces that are broken.”
“When someone makes the decision that something needs to change, we witness an exponential growth that ironically begins with surrender. People recover!”
Find Self Worth and Spiritual Healing
Healing comes from the program, the patients’ rediscovery of self-worth, and connecting to a power greater than themselves.
“When patients leave here, I want them to know who they are, who God is to them, and that there is a solution. We want them to be dependent on the program and their understanding of God, not on individual staff members.”
A Team Effort – What is Best for the Patient
Janet likes a viewpoint credited to President Theodore Roosevelt: “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
“La Hacienda is such an incredible healing environment,” says Janet. “I love the people that I work with and we are a team all the way through. People’s ideas are listened to and incorporated into how the center is run. The emphasis is on what is best for the patient.”
“We hold each other accountable to a very high standard of integrity and ethics.”
Janet is married, has four adult children and four grandchildren—all “amazing.” She enjoys spending time with family and friends, site-seeing vacations, Bible study, and snow skiing.
