Center for Early Relationship Support^®

Infant-Parent Training Institute: Faculty

Faculty Publications

Judith Arons, LICSW

Ms. Arons is a clinical social worker on the faculty of the Cambridge Health Alliance and maintains a private practice in Brookline where she sees adults, teens, couples, and mothers and infants. She is a past curriculum director and co-director with Dr. Epstein of the Infant Mental Health Training Program at the Boston Institute for Psychotherapy. Ms. Arons has extensive experience treating adults, couples, and adolescents. She also offers mother-infant psychotherapy and has a longstanding interest in women’s reproductive and infant health. She trained at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and at the Infant-Parent Training Institute. She has been teaching and supervising mental health professionals for thirty years.

Sarah Birss, MD

Dr. Birss is a child and adult psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, with training in developmental pediatrics. Dr. Birss has an interest in early emotional developmental theories, including attachment and psychoanalytic theories, and in applying this interest to clinical work with young children and parents. She has consulted to Early Intervention and to therapeutic preschools. She was co-director with Dr. Epstein of the Infant Mental Health Training Program at the Boston Institute for Psychotherapy for four years. Dr. Birss is a clinical instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and is on the faculty of the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. Dr. Birss has a private practice in child and adult psychiatry and psychoanalysis in Cambridge.

Jessica Boyatt, PsyD

Dr. Boyatt is a clinical psychologist with interests in infant mental health, bilingual, bicultural psychological assessment, and the interface between psychological change, attachment theory, and the brain. Her training includes learning about brain behavior relationships at the Brigham and Women’s Behavioral Neurology Group and a postdoctoral fellowship at the JF&CS Infant-Parent Training Institute. In addition to her private practice providing adult and dyadic psychotherapy through a relational psychoanalytic lens, she runs the Latino Assessment Team at the Brenner Center, which provides psychological and neuropsychological assessment to the underserved Latino population in the Boston area.

Ann Epstein, MD

Dr. Epstein has an interest in applying psychodynamic principles to clinical work with parents and young children. She has done research in attachment over the life cycle. She has consulted to Early Intervention programs, preschool programs, and a Pediatric Failure to Thrive Clinic. With Dr. Birss and Ms. Arons, she ran the Infant Mental Health Training Program at the Boston Institute for Psychotherapy for five years. Dr. Epstein is a psychoanalyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute; she practices child and adult psychiatry in Cambridge. She has been involved in teaching and supervising residents and fellows at Harvard Medical School for more than fifteen years. Dr. Epstein is a clinical instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Peggy H. Kaufman, MEd, LICSW

Ms. Kaufman is the founding director of the Center for Early Relationship Support of Jewish Family & Children’s Service. With a background in perinatal emotional health and the growth and development of parents, her interests include the earliest relationships. Ms. Kaufman is the recipient of multiple awards for her groundbreaking programs and her commitment to increase awareness of postpartum depression and maternal mental health. Ms. Kaufman has extensive experience in training and has taught at Bank Street College, Lesley University, and Wheelock College where she was adjunct faculty for more than 25 years. Clinical practice, consultation, and supervision continue to be a major part of her work and interest.

Judith Semonoff, LICSW

Ms. Semonoff is a clinical social worker with twenty years of experience in Early Intervention. Ms. Semonoff has served as a clinician and clinical supervisor and has a particular interest in supporting families who have a child with developmental delays or disabilities. Her clinical interests also include providing home-based parent-infant psychotherapy as well as integrating reflective supervision practices for staff from all disciplines that work with vulnerable families. Ms. Semonoff served as the training coordinator for the RI Early Intervention Training Center where she developed the training curriculum for multi-disciplinary staff and clinical supervisors; she has consulted to Early Intervention programs in RI and MA. Ms. Semonoff is a graduate of the Infant Mental Health Fellowship at the Infant-Parent Training Institute, a program of Jewish Family & Children’s Service.

Susan Sklan, MEd, LICSW

Ms. Sklan is a clinical social worker with a background in child development from her years of experience in Early Intervention and overseeing a program for adolescent parents. She is a graduate of the Infant Mental Health Fellowship program at Boston Institute for Psychotherapy. Her practice and interests include therapeutic supports for the parent-infant and parent-child relationship, home visit based psychotherapy, consultation to early childhood programs, and the provision of clinical services to under-served populations. She is currently the clinical director of the Parents Program of the Newton Community Service Center and she has a private practice.

Eda Spielman, PsyD

Dr. Spielman is the clinical director of the Center for Early Relationship Support of JF&CS. She holds a certificate in Infant Mental Health and came to JF&CS to develop Early Connections, a program of home-based mother-baby psychotherapy for dyads facing early relationship challenges. She is currently involved in a federally funded project at CERS developing an adaptation of the evidence-based practice of child-parent psychotherapy to support trauma-exposed mothers and their young children in residential treatment for substance use recovery. She taught a clinical integrative seminar at MSPP for many years; has served as a consultant to Early Intervention, Early Head Start, and Healthy Families; and is in private practice in Newton with a specialty in issues of pregnancy and parenting.

Sarah Torrey, LICSW

Ms. Torrey is a clinical social worker in private practice in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. She has more than twenty years of work in mental health with children, families, and adults. She is a graduate of the Infant Mental Health Fellowship at the Infant-Parent Training Institute, a program of Jewish Family & Children’s Service. Ms. Torrey specializes in working with new mothers and their babies, as well as families with young children, and adopted children with a range of attachment difficulties. Ms. Torrey has worked providing intensive home-based treatment, as well as in a therapeutic pre-school setting, in Early Intervention, and doing intensive reunification work with parents with infants and young children in state care. Her interests include Infant Observation, supervision, play therapy, and attachment issues across the life span. 

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