Tamara Keegan

Clients Served

• Young Adults and Adults (12+)
• Parents and family members of
  neurodivergent children
• Neurodivergent parents
• LGBTQ2SIA+

I bring 20 years of experience as a Child and Youth Care practitioner into my work, primarily working with autistic young people in the public school system. I went back to school to pursue a Masters of Social Work because I saw that there was a gap in identity-affirming services for the youth in my classrooms. I am deeply interested in creating spaces where neurodivergent youth feel seen, valued, and supported in exploring their identities, as well as empowered to self-advocate in environments often not designed for the way they experience the world. 

I enjoy working with families of neurodivergent young people and am passionate about the importance of neurodiversity-affirming support for parents as they support and advocate for their children. Parents are often given hopeless, deficit based messages about their neurodivergent children, and I believe that this is harmful, focusing my own practice on working with families to develop cross-neurotype communication skills, cope with competing needs within the family, and learn about the varied and valid ways that children can develop and engage with the world.

I am also committed to supporting the journeys of neurodivergent parents. Like many parents, I realized I was neurodivergent after my child’s diagnosis, and have personal experience with the process of learning to understand myself better while also working through the challenges and burnout that can come with the unpredictability, sleep deprivation and sensory demands of parenting. My goal is to support parents in exploring their self-regulation needs as parents and the development of self-compassion.