With support from a Vermont Mental Health Forgivable Loan, Clara Carroll is pursuing a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling

Clara Carroll grew up in South Starksboro and now lives just three miles down the road in Lincoln. Hidden within that short distance is a stretch of time spent out west, when she studied political science at Colorado College.

To get out of the “college bubble” and connect more deeply with her community, she and a friend started volunteering at a group living home in Colorado Springs.

She recalls one person who would hang out in the kitchen while they were making dinner. “I remember chopping onions and garlic, and this man would start talking about his life, the places he’d lived, the people he’d known, the things he was proud of and the things he was ashamed of. I remember feeling so honored to hear someone’s stories. To be let in.”

“I loved it,” Clara says. “The work allowed me to tap into the place I was living in a very different way, and that felt very rewarding. It felt like I had something to offer there. That’s when I started thinking that social work might be my career path.” She was right.

Coming back to home and community

After completing her bachelor’s degree, Clara returned to Vermont and spent the next few years working at a homeless shelter, in several afterschool programs, and in the Burlington Housing Authority’s offender reentry program, which serves people coming out of the Chittenden County Correctional Facility.

She eventually settled in at the Parent-Child Center in Middlebury, which serves families across Addison County. Clara says her work is primarily “based in the relationships I create with people. The practicalities of what they need help with—housing, healthcare, addictions, or working with family services—are secondary.”

While she’s always been able to make meaningful connections with people, Clara found that the experience of having children (she and her partner have a 4- and 5-year-old) gave her yet another way to tap into her role and her community differently.

Having kids makes things heavier when things are hard, or when things are not going well for a child. It hits me in a deeper way. At the same time, it’s helped me understand more deeply how difficult it is, what it feels like to not sleep for days on end, and the way it can impact your life. It gives me infinite empathy for the challenges that come about.

As “a part of the ‘village’” of support in her community, Clara needed support from the village as well. For the last three and a half years, Clara has been pursuing a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling at Vermont State University (VTSU). She’s enrolled in the weekend format for working professionals, where students take one class at a time and meet with their cohort one weekend a month.

Funding and family

Now in the practicum portion of the program, Clara works three days a week so she can do her internship two days a week. “It’s a wild time in life to be working, interning, studying, and raising a 4- and 5-year-old. It’s a lot to fit in. But I’m not alone in that at all. Others in my cohort are in similar circumstances.”

Many of her peers have also worked in the field for years and are juggling jobs, families, and school. Clara admires their collective level of expertise, commitment, and belief in doing hard things together. “They’re all really talented, skilled people who we need doing this kind of work,” she says.

For many of them, including Clara, VSAC funding has made their studies more affordable. When Clara enrolled at VTSU, a state grant helped pay her tuition. While that funding is no longer available, she’s now receiving a Vermont Mental Health Forgivable Loan, an interest-free loan that pays up to 100% of tuition. That program, administered by VSAC and funded by the state of Vermont, forgives one year of student loan debt for every year the student works in Vermont’s mental health field post-graduation.

Clara says going back to school while supporting a family has made things tight financially, and she wouldn’t have started the program without the funding available through the original grant and wouldn’t have been able to continue without the forgivable loan. “I feel very grateful.”

Keeping it local

Now, she’s about to finish her second internship (her first was at the Parent-Child Center) at Mt. Abraham Middle/High School in Bristol, where her partner teaches middle school and where Clara went to school. Some of the same faculty members who taught Clara are still there, and she has delighted in being part of the school community in a different way. While many mental health providers choose not to practice in their home communities—to avoid the small-town realities of running into clients at the grocery store or at your child’s school—Clara sees these connections as a positive.

There are ways to manage it gracefully, especially if you bring the same approach you bring to your work: letting others take the lead on how they want to interact with you. When people you work with professionally also see you as a human and see that they have things in common with you, it can be helpful.

When she graduates, Clara hopes to expand into more clinical work at her current agency. But no matter where she ends up practicing, she wants it to be local. “There are a lot of people in my own community who face a lot of obstacles and aren’t really heard or seen. I feel passionate about sticking with that.”

A decade and a half after volunteering at the group home in Colorado Springs, Clara is still practicing her gift for letting others be seen and heard, the same way she offered a listening ear to the man in the kitchen. But Clara sees it more as a gift she receives. “It’s surprising and incredible to me every time someone welcomes me in—to their home or to their story. I feel totally honored.”