Ben Birkby, PsyD

Director of Evaluation Research

email: Ben@reacheval.com

Licensed Psychologist & Evaluation Researcher Ben serves as Director of Planning, Evaluation, and Consultation with REACH. He holds a Psy.D. from Spalding University in Clinical Psychology (December, 2000), and a license to practice psychology from the Kentucky Board of Examiners in Psychology (he also holds the Health Service Provider endorsement). A long-time REACH employee, Ben has held several positions and worked in various capacities during the past 13 years.

For a number of years Ben worked as a Clinical Coordinator in REACH’s Therapeutic Foster Care program, coordinating the care of a number of children with complex needs. He also helped to coordinate the initial training sequence and certification process of therapeutic foster parents.

More recently, Ben has been primarily involved in planning, managing and conducting a range of program evaluation projects. Ben has served as principal investigator for several evaluation projects and is currently leading the evaluation efforts for a large substance abuse prevention initiative in partnership with Kentucky’s Division of Mental Health and Substance Abuse. Also a child and family clinician, Ben worked in summer therapeutic recreation programs in New York and Kentucky and completed his predoctoral internship at Girls and Boys Town in Nebraska. He maintains a small outpatient psychology practice. Ben volunteers on the Ethics Committee of the Kentucky Psychological Association and has served as both Chair and Vice-Chair of this committee. His professional interests include planning and evaluation of human services programs, therapeutic foster care, family support, community partnerships, child and family behavior therapy, prevention of child maltreatment and related areas.

Ben has three children (Nathan, Grace and Will) and is married to Laurie Birkby who also works at REACH.