Erin Johnson, LCSW, RPT-S, ACS

Why Erin

I invited Erin to participate in the CESWP Pilot Fellowship because her work reflects the kind of leadership I want to help cultivate in our profession. She brings deep clinical experience, a willingness to question established practices, and a clear commitment to children, families, and the social workers who serve them.

Through the Fellowship, Erin is developing a play therapy supervision program grounded in ethical courage, critical thinking, and collaborative learning. My role is to support her in turning that vision into a sustainable offering that is distinctly her own.

Bethany Raab, LCSW, ACS
Founder, Center for Ethical Social Work Practice

Meet Erin

Erin Johnson is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Registered Play Therapist-Supervisor, and Approved Clinical Supervisor with nearly 20 years of experience working with children and families and 10 years of experience providing clinical supervision.

Her professional background spans early childhood development, complex and developmental trauma, foster care, residential treatment, disability support, medical trauma and medical fragility, sexual trauma, high-conflict family systems, legal-system involvement, community mental health, and private practice. Throughout her career, Erin has worked alongside caregivers, educators, attorneys, child and family investigators, CASAs, children's legal representatives, residential providers, medical professionals, early-intervention teams, and public and private schools.

Erin's approach to supervision integrates child-centered play therapy, psychodynamic and family approaches, directive play therapy strategies grounded in attunement, narrative and expressive therapies, developmental theory, behavioral supports, and neurodiversity-informed practice. Her theoretical orientation is firmly rooted in queer and feminist theory, critical examination of mainstream therapy and wellness practices, attention to racial and systemic oppression, and the ways larger systems shape the lives of children and families.

At the heart of Erin's supervisory philosophy is the belief that strong clinical foundations create the conditions for creativity, flexibility, and authentic connection. She approaches supervision as a collaborative relationship in which clinicians are encouraged to think critically, examine assumptions, navigate ethical complexity, and develop confidence in their own clinical judgment.

Erin rejects the idea that professional expertise means holding expertise over another person's life. Children and families remain the experts on their own lives, and the right to self-determination is fundamental to dignity. She believes our responsibility as therapists is to continually develop the knowledge, flexibility, humility, and clinical courage necessary to see our clients as clearly as possible.

She believes in voracious learning, critical thinking, ambitious application, and deep commitment to therapeutic work. For Erin, professional growth and curiosity should not have a finish line. Clinicians are entrusted with extraordinary access to their clients' lives, and that trust makes accountability matter.

As a supervisor, Erin's goal is to help clinicians become thoughtful, courageous, grounded practitioners who can remain curious and clinically responsive even when the work becomes complicated.

What Erin Is Building

Supervision for the complexity of working with children and families

Through the CESWP Fellowship, Erin has developed a specialized supervision experience for play therapists working with children and families navigating complex lives and systems.

The program brings together practical clinical skill, developmental understanding, ethical reflection, systems thinking, social justice, and collaborative learning. Rather than teaching clinicians to simply follow a collection of techniques, Erin is interested in helping them develop the judgment to determine what a particular child, family, and situation actually requires.

Her emerging model is organized around six foundations:

Safety • Grounded Creativity • Relationship • Curiosity • Systems Thinking • Ethical Courage

Ethical Courage serves as an organizing principle throughout Erin's work: the capacity to remain thoughtful, accountable, curious, and clinically grounded when the answers are not simple.

The goal is not simply to help clinicians become more knowledgeable about play therapy. It is to help them become increasingly capable of integrating what they know, thinking critically about what they encounter, and practicing with greater intentionality and confidence.

The Work Behind the Work

Developing a strong professional offering requires more than having expertise.

Over the course of the Fellowship, Erin has been translating nearly two decades of clinical experience and a decade of supervision experience into a defined approach that can be articulated, taught, experienced, and sustained.

Our work together has included:

• Clarifying Erin's supervisory philosophy and professional identity

• Identifying the values that organize her approach to supervision

• Defining the experience she wants supervisees to have

• Developing the developmental arc and curriculum for her supervision program

• Distinguishing what belongs in the first cohort from what can grow later

• Building the systems and infrastructure needed to operate the program

• Strengthening the language she uses to communicate the value of her work

• Developing a strategy for professional visibility, referrals, recruitment, and launch

The Fellowship is not about turning Erin's work into CESWP's work. It is about helping her identify what is distinctly hers and build the structures that allow her to bring it forward.

Learn more about the CESWP Fellowship →

Explore Erin's Work

Interested in working with Erin?

Erin's supervision groups, current program details, availability, and registration are offered independently through Tall Pines Therapy.

Her play therapy supervision program is designed for clinicians who want to deepen their clinical judgment, strengthen their work with children and families, and participate in supervision that makes room for challenge, curiosity, complexity, and professional growth.

Explore Erin's Play Therapy Supervision →

Erin's clinical supervision and professional services are independently operated through Tall Pines Therapy and are not services of the Center for Ethical Social Work Practice.