Who Are We?

AMANI Clinical Services is a group of passionate, warm, friendly, and fun professionals who are dedicated to clinical excellence and diversity. Our mission is to provide evidence-based and personalized, comforting and challenging services to those in need throughout the lifespan. We have the same mission when it comes to the provision of clinical supervision and development of the trainee: we strive to provide supervision based evidence and best practices and supervision that is personalized, supervision that is comforting and challenging.

How Long Have We Been Supervising?

As a practice, we have been enthusiastically participating in the professional development of Clinical Psychologists since 2016 with our first Post-Doctoral Fellow placement. We have since had a diverse group of trainees including Post-Doctoral Fellows, Licensed Professional Counselors seeking their Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor credential, and now, a Doctoral Intern. Both Dr. Kroencke and Dr. Daniels served for many years as clinical supervisors in other roles and systems prior to joining AMANI Clinical Services. Our Supervisor Team is passionate about, and invested in, the professional and personal development of scholar-practitioners. We take the responsibility of the provision of supervision–and all that encompasses–very seriously. All of us have had formative supervisory and training experiences–for better and for worse. We believe that being a Professional Psychologist requires a life-long love of learning, growth, and expansion of ideas. We work hard individually and as a team to emanate this belief in our supervisory styles, actively incorporate the feedback of trainees, and consistently grow to meet the diverse needs of our trainees. We are all thrilled to be a developing, formalized pre-doctoral internship program.

AMANI Values

AMANI Clinical Services has been in practice for 10 years, first as Dr. Hastings & Associates and then re-branded about 4 years ago as AMANI Clinical Services. AMANI Clinical Services is a place where people come to heal. We pride ourselves in personalized, boutique-style care from the moment a prospective patient first makes contact with our New Patient Concierge and through every level of the care and interaction they receive from our amazing administrative team and the entirety of their clinical treatment.

Definitions of AMANI

We chose AMANI as our name because of its meaning in multiple languages, and how those meanings capture our mission.
In Sanskrit, AMANI means road and way
In Swahili (a language spoken throughout Eastern Africa and is deeply important to Dr. Hastings), AMANI means peace, safety, and security
In Inuit, AMANI is a suffix that notes presence and location.
In Arabic, AMANI means love

Our value is to work with people of all ages (starting with newborns in parent-child dyads, all the way to geriatrics) to help sift through their life circumstances and symptoms. We help people find their way to a sense of peace, security, and wellbeing. Each one of us works hard to help our patients find peace, presence, and love in their most important relationships. We also talk a lot about cultivating each patients’ “emotional GPS,” so that patients learn to locate themselves, their needs, and the driving forces of their symptoms.

Our Patients Get Better

We are warm, understanding…AND results oriented and challenging. Our patients enjoy watching themselves change over time and we enjoy celebrating with them! Everyone’s journey towards change, symptom reduction, and well-being is different. We tailor each patient’s treatment plan to best fit their unique style of growth, goals, and life circumstances. We are strongly committed to systemic conceptualization and treatment for all of our patients and tailor that level of intervention to the needs of the patients.

We do not do “bobble head” therapy here. We value the expertise of each provider and also honor the inherent expertise each patient brings regarding their own phenomenological experiences. Our approach is integrative and along the spectrum of client-led to structured, we err on the side of active for most cases.

Environment

We believe in the power of a healing space for patients, trainees, and employees. We have taken exceptional care to create a spa-like environment for our patients and our clinicians which emphasizes bringing the beauty of nature inside. We have paid painstaking attention detail to making our space as seamlessly operational and supportive of our clinicians as possible. We have ensured that the space also meets the clinical needs of our patients.

Additionally, we have designed our space to be supportive and inclusive of training needs. We have 2 separate offices with one-way mirrors which are wired for audio and video. These spaces allow for live supervision, implementation of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy and various models of Parent Management Training, and support increasing mastery of the administration of psychological and neuropsychological tests and assessments.

We are located in the suburbs of Chicago. As such, a car is recommended for transportation.

Team

We value each and every member of our team and their equally important roles in serving our patients.

Manager

Our amazing practice manager Ryan is responsible for human resource related concerns and operations, technology concerns, and general problem solving related to the operations of the practice as a whole.

Administrative Support Team

Our administrative support team is second to none. We have a Billing Concierge, a Patient Happiness & Scheduling Concierge, and a New Patient Concierge. They have fantastic, collaborative, and supportive working relationships with each other and with our clinical team. They are the spine of this practice, amazing human beings, and work very hard to support our clinical team.

Supervisor Team

Our supervisor team is made up of 4 independently licensed professionals: 3 Clinical Psychologists and 1 Masters Level Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor. Our supervisory team is based on deep and abiding respect for the diversity represented in the team, honesty, reliability, accountability, collaboration…and a lot of fun! Our supervisory team is diverse in interests, experience, expertise, and backgrounds. The 3 psychologists have been friends for about a decade and both Dr. Daniels and Dr. Massey-Hastings were trained and supervised by Dr. Kroencke in the early years of their careers. Amanda Owen, LCPC has recently been promoted to our supervisory team after training with us for several years. She has proven herself to be of upstanding character, clinically passionate, and providing valuable clinical expertise and support to our cohesive team.

What Supervisees Say About Their Supervisory Experiences

• “I LOVE having the diversity of working individually with Dr. MH, Dr. K, and Dr. D. You all bring not only a depth of knowledge, but come from a multitude of different techniques, theories, and just life events. This is something that I was initially nervous about having three different supervisions, but it has proven to be such an asset and strength! Learning from three intelligent, passionate, and empathetic woman has changed my life for the better, from both a clinical and personal perspective.”
• “You actually offer supervision! LoL!!! It’s a great synergy of both pushing professionally to attain more independence while supporting so I don’t feel alone. The balance of professional and personal topics that are discussed during supervision has also helped my become a better clinician. Because I feel comfortable sharing my personal experiences, my supervisors have been able to point out countertransference that can impact my clinical skills. I absolute love that!”
• “There’s an environment of failing safely, assuming it’s not an egregious ethical/legal violation. I’m allowed to make a mistake, clean up the mistake, and grow from it, rather than living in the shame.”
• “When a problem arises, it feels like there’s a genuine push for a harmonious balance for problem solving.”
• “I also feel incredibly confident that if a hole was to arise [in my training or supervision], I know my feedback will be honored and addressed in [appropriate] ways.”
• “I love the group supervision. I enjoy hearing the different perspectives, but it’s also validating to see that more experienced clinicians also have similar struggles that I feel. I also love the culture of vulnerability that has been created that allows not only myself, but everyone to share and create greater growth opportunities.”
• “I just had a realization complet[ing] my notes this morning how much ease I have with notes now. This process used to qui[te] literally terrify me. I want to THANK YOU for hanging in there with me!!!! I know they are nowhere near perfect, but the typing of them doesn’t cause my literal panic in the slightest.”

Populations Served

We are a clinic that exists in an affluent suburb of Chicago and meets patients’ needs at the outpatient level. We emphasize systemic treatment. The populations that we serve are broad and representative of the diversity of our supervisor team.

• Adoptees and families formed by adoption; specializing in the unique needs of adoptees; trans-racial adoptees
• Those involved in the family formation process including reproduction, infertility and trying to conceive, and adoption
• Parent-infant dyads and children in early childhood
• Children
• Adolescents
• Young Adults
• Adults
• Geriatrics
• Couples
• Families
• Perinatal and post-partum populations
• Those with substance abuse and addiction as well as those with process addictions
• Chronic and complex medical needs
• Those suffering from Adverse Childhood Experiences and other traumas
• Those in need of psychological and neuropsychological assessment

Weaknesses in Populations Served

In an affluent suburb of Chicago at the outpatient level, there are several populations that pre-doctoral interns will not likely be exposed to. We consider this a significant gap in the training that we can offer.

• Diverse socio-economic backgrounds
• Culturally diverse and historically underrepresented and served communities such as Black, Latin X, and Asian-American communities.