James (Jim) Skinner
LCSW-C
Jim is a recently retired (4/8/21) healthcare advocate and Licensed Clinical Social Worker with forty plus years of clinical outpatient and inpatient experience in community-based mental health. He has participated in several government funded research and demonstration projects providing training and technical assistance for program development and capacity building for the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the National Institutes of Nursing Research (NINR), and the Centers for Mental Health Services (CMHS) and he has presented at several national and international conferences on mental health, HIV/AIDS, cultural competence and diversity and has co-authored HIV/AIDS research publications.
Mr. Skinner who is originally from Southwestern Pennsylvania started his professional career as Coordinator of Children’s services and worked with children and families for many years until switching to adults in the late eighties when HIV/AIDS was still an epidemic and served as the first paid Buddy System Coordinator at the leading ASO in Philadelphia, PA after serving as a buddy to a person living with HIV/AIDS. At age forty, Jim was accepted to the accelerated nursing program at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing earning a BSN in fourteen months. He served on several boards in Pennsylvania including; the Community Advisory Board (CAB) for the Pitt Men’s Study at the University of Pittsburgh, the Partnership for Minority HIV Prevention among others, and the Chicago Task Force on LGBTQ Aging when living in Chicago, IL..
Jim was most recently employed at Green Ridge Behavioral Health providing individual, couple, and group therapies for those eighteen and older for those with severe mental illness. He is trained in Motivational Interviewing, Cognitive and Dialectical Behavior therapies and has been a member of the National Association of Social Workers since receiving his Masters Degree from West Virginia University in 1978. Jim is a Maryland Board of Social Work Examiners approved social work supervisor, and a past member of the American Society on Aging. He is a Life Member of the Pennsylvania State University Alumni Association.
