Sandra Brackenridge

Sandra Brackenridge, LCSW, BCD has been practicing Clinical Social Work since 1983 in various settings and in three states: Louisiana, Idaho, and Texas. She maintains a small private practice, and she supervises social workers for their clinical licensure.  As Coordinator of Counseling Services at LSU School of Veterinary Medicine 1990-1994,  she developed a social work internship, a pet loss counseling program, an animal-assisted therapy program, and a counseling service for veterinary students. This was one of the first counseling programs in a school of veterinary medicine, and the first program to offer all components.  She left LSU to teach Social Work at Idaho State University from 1994-2008, and she continued as an Associate Professor of Social Work at Texas Woman's University, retiring from teaching in 2017. She has published numerous articles, chapters, and two books: one about pet loss and the other about stress management for the veterinary practice team. She served as Pet Loss Consultant for the Idaho and for the Texas  Veterinary Medical Foundations.  She created and supervises the veterinary social work program and internship at the Center for Veterinary Specialty & Emergency Care in Lewisville, Texas, and she provides consultation to other practices who wish to develop a veterinary social work program.  She presents locally and nationally about compassion fatigue, burnout, and suicide in the veterinary profession, and she serves as faculty for the University of Tennessee’s certificate program in veterinary social work.  In October 2018 Sandra received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Texas state chapter of the National Association of Social Workers.