Melanie Rankin

 Children, adolescents, and families often face overwhelming emotional and behavioral challenges related to trauma, attachment disruptions, loss, and major life transitions. These experiences can leave individuals feeling dysregulated, misunderstood, and unsure of how to move forward—especially when stress and crisis feel constant.

I provide a safe, structured, and compassionate therapeutic environment grounded in evidence-based practices. My approach is trauma-informed, attachment-focused, and strengths-based, with careful attention to each client’s developmental stage and family system. I collaborate closely with clients and caregivers to understand underlying needs, build emotional regulation skills, and create realistic, meaningful goals that support healing and growth.

Clients and families experience increased emotional safety, improved coping skills, and a greater sense of stability and confidence. Therapy becomes a supportive space where clients can process difficult experiences, strengthen relationships, and move toward healthier patterns of connection and functioning.

Experience

Melanie is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with over two decades of experience serving children, families, and individuals across a wide range of settings. She earned her Master of Social Work with a Clinical Concentration from Temple University and holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and Therapeutic Recreation from Houghton College.

Her professional background includes extensive outpatient therapy work with children and families, adoption and permanency services, foster care, crisis intervention, and trauma- and attachment-focused treatment. Melanie has served as an Outpatient Therapist providing evidence-based mental health services to children and families, and she has held long-standing roles in adoption services as both an Adoption Coordinator and Senior Adoption Caseworker.

Throughout her career, Melanie has worked closely with multidisciplinary teams, schools, county agencies, and family systems, supporting clients through grief and loss, attachment disruptions, trauma, behavioral challenges, and major life transitions. She brings a calm, grounded presence and a deep understanding of complex family dynamics to her clinical work.

Client Focus

Parents, children and adolescents (approximately ages 3–14) and their families. Older adolescents considered on a case-by-case basis  

Types of Therapy

Trauma-informed therapy, attachment-based therapy, strengths-based therapy, evidence-based child and family interventions

Issues

Anxiety, trauma, attachment challenges, grief and loss, behavioral concerns, emotional regulation, family transitions, adoption-related issues, foster care dynamics, adjustment difficulties, and crisis-related stress