11/30/2017 0 Comments Katie Leikam, LCSW: Transforming the Decatur LGBTQIA Community Through Affirming Therapyby Cameron Williams Crawford I met Katie for the first time when she and her husband hosted us at a housewarming party at their new home. They had recently moved into our neighborhood, and my husband, a realtor, had worked as their agent. “I think you’ll like the Leikams,” he told me on the ride over, “They’re good people, and it seems like you and Katie might have some of the same interests.” Turns out, he was right. We arrived at the party, where Katie graciously welcomed us at the front door. She then ushered us into the kitchen and told us to help ourselves to the taco buffet and the wine slushies. I knew in that moment that we would be friends. Apart from discovering we shared a mutual love of most things epicurean, I also learned that night that Katie, a licensed clinical social worker, was in the process of opening her own private practice in Decatur, where she would specialize in treating LGBTQIA, gender non-conforming, and transgender clients. She has since opened her practice, and it is thriving. Katie mostly grew up in Griffin, Georgia, but because her father worked as a salesman, her family moved around quite a bit; for a time, she also lived in Florida and North Carolina. Eventually, she found her way to back to Georgia, where she would go on to earn a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Georgia State University and a Master’s in Social Work from the University of Georgia. It was during her time in grad school that she gained her first experience in social work. In 2005, Katie worked the Meals on Wheels program as part of her internship with the Athens Community Council on Aging. That same summer, she served as a parent aid for DFACS, supervising visitation with foster children and their biological parents. Katie considers her time with DFACS as both challenging and rewarding. In one particular experience she described to me, Katie remembered going into a home where she discovered some needles and dirty diapers. “I had to tell the kid that he couldn’t see his mom that day,” she told me, “and he was really upset and tried to punch me. That was a difficult experience.” One of her favorite memories, however, is when “a mom set up a manicure for her daughter” during a supervised visit at a library: “She brought nail polish and a foot spa, all sorts of stuff, and gave her daughter a manicure, and that’s what they did for their visit. It was really cool.” After she finished her Master’s, she was a program coordinator for foster kids; she monitored foster homes, made checklists, and made sure “the homes were in order and the kids were taken care of behaviorally.” One of the reasons why Katie chose a career in social work was because, as she said to me, “when I was in high school, I was seeing a licensed clinical social worker. I absolutely loved him, and he made a really big difference in my life.” At first, Katie said, she wanted to be an English teacher, until she decided she would much rather “help people who were having issues and concerns.”
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