Lucinda Miles is a crisis program coordinator at Volunteers for Youth Justice. With a deep commitment to children, she has established herself as an advocate, teacher and mentor.

Lucinda is a regional leader in Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI®), where she equips foster families, biological families and support systems such as schools, counselors and more with the knowledge and skills of how to look beyond the “bad” behavior and support children who have endured trauma. At home, her devotion and passion have sparked a movement that is creating trauma-informed systems that more effectively help kids coming from hard places.

Each year, about 700 children enter the Caddo parish foster care system as a result of abuse or neglect. The actions that lead families to this place are traumatic for these children. To further compound on this trauma, they are forced to attend court hearings to determine their fate. Court can be a scary place – and Lucinda has piloted ways to mitigate that experience. She designed and raised all of the funds for The Calming Studio, a state-of-the-art sensory rich room which aids in regulating the emotions of those who have experienced the effects of complex trauma.

Lucinda has been relentless in making sure that her vision of creating a trauma focused experience for all children in the foster care system has come to fruition. She won’t stop until each child gets the support and focus that he or she deserves to survive and thrive in spite of traumatic experiences.