Evelyn Rubenshtein has been a Clinician at SMOC for over 12 years, serving as a core member of the MID (MA Impaired Driver) and Structured Outpatient teams for most of that time. Despite other staff turnover, Evelyn has held the program together, leading group after group and supporting the training of new group facilitators over the years. Evelyn has a keen eye for detail, always keeping track of all compliance factors and making sure that everyone stays on task. Not only has she supported new facilitators and interns in learning about the program work, she has been instrumental in helping our admin coordinator create effective systems for monitoring all program requirements. Interns consistently enjoy observing and co-facilitating Evelyn's groups, as they learn so much from her in both content and skills related to effective group facilitation.
In addition to her superior ability to keep everyone on track administratively, Evelyn implements an effective balance of structure and empathy. Court-ordered treatment can be very difficult for clients, often making engagement and true personal growth challenging. Evelyn always seems to know how to set and require compliance with consistent structures around participation and attendance, while also making clients feel seen and supported so that they want to participate and engage with peers in the group. She takes the time to get to know her group participants, and will strongly advocate for their needs when they require support, and because she also speaks Russian, she is able to support clients with this language need.