Professional Experience
- Psychotherapy for adults, couples, families, and adolescents; attachment and addiction
- Substance use evaluations and treatment; expert and fact witness
- Crisis counseling and critical incident debriefing
- Attachment-informed supervision of parent-child visits; family reunification
- Clinical supervision of resident counselors toward LPC licensure
- Conduct child-parent attachment-caregiving evaluations for intervention, placement, and forensic decisions
- Provide expert testimony regarding attachment-caregiving evaluations, recommendations, and attachment-based interventions, including the Circle of Security intervention protocol
- Training, clinical supervision, and consultation for Circle of Security therapists
- Training and consultation for community and residential treatment providers, foster care and prevention agencies, and departments of social services
- Monthly case consultation with Albemarle County Department of Social Services; case consultation with Virginia child welfare agencies
- Training and consultation for Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) programs throughout Virginia
- Primary liaison between the Circle of Security Network and professionals across Virginia's child welfare system
- Organizational leadership, clinical staff management, financial planning, and attachment evaluator training and program development
- Adapted attachment-caregiving evaluations to a telehealth format
- Conducted child-parent attachment-caregiving evaluations and provided related expert testimony
- Clinical supervision and consultation for Circle of Security therapists
- Implemented individual and family Circle of Security protocols
- Supervised clinical and administrative staff; managed program and statewide inpatient placement budgets
- Developed new programming, including co-occurring disorders and jail-based post-dispositional programs
- Provided intensive family, individual, and group outpatient therapy; administered Acupuncture Detox Protocol
- Outpatient child, family, and adult therapy in a rural clinic
- Intensive in-home therapy and case management for families with children at high risk of removal
- Emergency services and crisis counseling; school-based interventions, preschool through high school
- Designed a violence-prevention program for Nelson County High School (1999)
- Chair, Nelson County Family Assessment and Planning Team (FAPT)
- Lead instructor and counselor for 45-day wilderness expeditions with incarcerated youth from Newark and Camden
- Certifying instructor, National Standard Program for Outdoor Leadership Certification, Wind River Range, WY
- Led expeditions for Upward Bound, youth-at-risk, high school, collegiate, and corporate populations; designed staff training and curricula
Expert Witness Qualification
Board Service
Consultation & Training
Specialized Training
Education & Licensure
Background
John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth pioneered the field of attachment theory in the late 1950s through the 1970s. Since that period, more than 75,000 peer-reviewed research articles have been published in scientific journals worldwide, and since the 1980s attachment has been the strongest single driving force in the field of developmental psychology.
Archer Maness, M.Ed., LPC, serves as the Director of the Ainsworth Attachment Clinic & The Circle of Security Network, following his earlier position as Associate Director beginning in 2013. Mr. Maness was the lead clinician and program manager with Prevention, Child & Adolescent Addiction & Mental Health Services at Region Ten Community Services Board for ten years until 2004, when he established a full-time private practice. Mr. Maness has worked and trained closely with Dr. Robert Marvin since 2001, providing attachment and trauma evaluations, clinical interventions, clinical supervision, and training in attachment theory and the Circle of Security Attachment Intervention. His career spans the fields of attachment, substance use disorders, adolescents and families, clinical supervision, foster care, and family reunification. He serves a diverse range of populations, from incarcerated youth, to biological, foster, and adoptive families, to corporate clients.
Dr. Bob Marvin, Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia, was one of Mary Ainsworth's earliest students. Dr. Marvin is a John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellow, co-author of the Preschool Attachment Coding System, and a U.S. and U.K. grant recipient for his work in assessing and intervening with disrupted early relationships. Dr. Marvin later developed the Circle of Security Attachment Intervention Protocol, for which he was awarded the International Bowlby-Ainsworth Award in 2005. He is the Executive Director and Founder of the Ainsworth Attachment Clinic & The Circle of Security Network in Charlottesville, VA.