Janna Hobbs, LCSW
Co-Director
Janna Hobbs is Co-Director of Boston Child Study Center – Maine, where she provides expert supervision and training to BCSC’s DBT program as well as clinical consultation to patients and families. A Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker in Maine and Massachusetts, she is trained in and has extensive experience in Dialectical Behavior Therapy and family work.
Janna graduated from the University of New Hampshire and worked in higher education prior to getting her graduate degree from Simmons College in 1985. She worked at the Hall Mercer Center for Children and Adolescents at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, providing individual and family treatment, inpatient and outpatient. She gained further experience on an inpatient unit that treated young adults with bi-polar and other major mental illnesses. She took that experience to McLean’s residential programs, where she helped patients transition from hospital settings. Janna then moved into leadership roles, becoming Program Director of an adult residence and then Center Director of a combined residence and partial hospital program. She was first introduced to DBT and trauma work when she joined the staff of the Women’s Treatment Program at McLean.
In 1997, Janna became the Director of Clinical Services at Germaine Lawrence in Arlington, Massachusetts, a non-profit residential treatment center and school for adolescents and young women, where she was a member of the leadership team, supervised all clinical staff and directed specialty clinical care.
Janna returned to McLean Hospital in 2007 to co-found 3East, the first residential intensive DBT unit for suicidal and self-injuring adolescents. She acted as Program Director of the premier unit and Director of Clinical Services of the Continuum. She was part of the leadership team that developed, implemented and supervised a partial hospital program, several step down units, a residence in the community and outpatient DBT. Her clinical work in this setting was primarily with parents, including individual parent guidance, coaching, and running parent skills groups. She was McLean’s first nomination for the Schwartz Center Rounds Compassionate Caregiver award and was chosen to serve as an Ad Hoc member of the President’s Cabinet in 2013 and 2014.
Janna values training and developing new clinicians. Throughout her career she has supervised interns, post-doctoral fellows and mental health workers. Her broad experience working with different diagnoses, treatments, and directing different levels of care informs her assessments and treatment planning.