Her Story
About Stacey
Stacey Bates Jones, LCSW, is a licensed clinical social worker and practice owner based in Atlanta, Georgia, with extensive experience in trauma-informed care, clinical leadership, and therapeutic program development. Her professional focus is on supporting children, adolescents, and families impacted by complex trauma, with a commitment to creating safe, inclusive, and healing-centered environments. She is certified in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), the Nurturing Parenting Program, and is also certified in equine-assisted psychotherapy through EAGALA, expanding her use of experiential and non-traditional therapeutic modalities.
Stacey’s journey into the mental health field began with a deep interest in working with children and evolved through academic exploration and mentorship into a dedicated career in social work. After earning a full academic scholarship and completing her undergraduate studies in psychology, she was guided by faculty mentors toward social work, where she found her true professional calling. She went on to earn her Master of Social Work from the University of Tennessee and built a career centered on serving vulnerable populations, including children and families experiencing homelessness, while also developing expertise in program leadership, supervision, and clinical training.
For the past several years, Stacey served as the lead therapist at a nonprofit school supporting children and families experiencing homelessness, where she built the organization’s entire therapeutic program from the ground up. She developed intake systems, clinical documentation processes, family engagement practices, and an internship program that grew services to approximately 80 children while mentoring emerging clinicians. She is now the founder of Village Services LLC, a private practice rooted in the belief that it takes a village to support healing and growth. Through her practice, she continues to expand access to trauma-informed care, with a strong interest in experiential therapies such as equine-assisted work, and she remains committed to building sustainable, ethical systems that support both clients and the next generation of clinicians.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Stacey
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to the relationships I've built - that's what I'm most proud of. The accomplishment I'm most proud of, honestly, is the relationships that I built with the families and kids I've worked with. For the last 4 years, I've grown an intern program, and the interns would all ask me, how do you remember all this stuff about the kids? Because by the end of the program, we had around 80 kids in therapy, and I remembered all of their stories. I told them, well, I can't not remember them, right? So yeah, the relationships with the kids, the relationships with the families, the relationships with the interns, teachers, other clinicians I've worked with - those relationships honestly trump everything, because those take a lot of work. I've enjoyed the people 100%. I consider myself an introvert, so that has been an interesting awakening for me, but I think people matter most. I've experienced a lot of trauma personally, and also as a byproduct of the work I do, but there's always been at least one, if not more than one person who has kind of been an anchor during that time. So I've enjoyed the people, I've enjoyed the relationships, I've enjoyed watching myself grow and be resilient too.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Treat it as a marathon, not as a sprint. You are gonna want to quit a lot of times along the way, and you may have to change course sometimes, but that's kind of what sums it up. It is not meant to be just a day - this is your life, this is forever. So yeah, treat it like that.
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