Dr. Sandra L. Bloom is currently President and CEO of CommunityWorks, a systems consulting firm specializing in helping organizations develop nonviolent, trauma-informed systems. Dr. Bloom served as Founder and Executive Director of the Sanctuary programs from 1980-2001, inpatient psychiatric programs for the treatment of trauma-related disorders. Dr. Bloom now serves as the Distinguished Fellow at Andrus Children's Center. She is a Past-President of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS) and in 1998 received the Sarah Haley Award for Clinical Excellence from the ISTSS.
Dr. Bloom is the Past-President of the Philadelphia chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility and during her tenure helped to develop award winning domestic violence training programs for health care settings. In 1999-2000 she chaired the Task Force on Family Violence for Attorney General of Pennsylvania, Mike Fisher. From 1998-2001 Dr. Bloom served as the Saul Z. Cohen Chair at the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services in New York, introducing the Sanctuary concepts to a large residential program for children and adolescents in Hawthorne, New York. In Winter 2000, NIMH awarded a three-year grant to study the implementation of the Sanctuary Model into this residential setting and Dr. Bloom serves as co-investigator to this grant awarded through Colombia University. In September, 2001, she began implementing a “Safe Schools, Safe Communities” grant for the Atlantic County New Jersey School District with the Sanctuary Model as the prevention part of the project aimed at reducing school violence and improving school climate in the public school system.
From 2000-2003, Bloom and her team consulted with the Julia Dyckman Andrus Memorial Center in Yonkers, New York to introduce the Sanctuary Model to their residential treatment program, school, and day hospital program for children under the age of fifteen. Interim House is a residential program for women who are substance abusers and trauma survivors who have used the Sanctuary Model for the past several years to inform their approach to substance abuse treatment. Women Against Abuse, the only domestic violence shelter in Philadelphia has also been utilizing the Sanctuary Model to address the needs of mothers and their children. Pace School, one of Pennsylvania’s approved private schools and day hospital program for emotionally disturbed children located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has also consulted with the Sanctuary team to apply the concepts to their program. The acute care psychiatric unit at Salem Hospital, Oregon have received training in the Sanctuary Model in the past year have improved their program dramatically while decreasing the use of seclusion and restraint by over 97%.
She is the author of Creating Sanctuary: Toward the Evolution of Sane Societies, and co-author of Bearing Witness: Violence and Collective Responsibility. She speaks nationally and internationally about the impact of traumatic experience on individuals, families, organizations, and cultures. Beginning in 2005 Dr. Bloom will sponsor the development of a Sanctuary Leadership Development Institute at Andrus Children's Center.
