Angel in the Nursery

Kiran Malpe, LCSW 

By Susan Chinitz, PsyD

If you were an infant or toddler in foster care, you’d do well to have Kiran Malpe as your advocate! Kiran is the Clinical Director of the Strong Starts Court Initiative, a Family Court-based project for children birth to three who have child protection cases in New York City.  In five short years, Kiran has built Strong Starts into a vital, highly regarded, and impactful support to very young children, their families, and their judges, attorneys and caseworkers, all of whom are now better attuned to the needs, and the interventions required, to ensure the children’s healthy development and emotional well-being. Kiran is a dedicated and highly experienced clinician who shares her expertise throughout a vast child welfare system, and has helped parents, foster parents, and professionals to consider all events and decisions through the eyes of the child. Her supervisees report Kiran is not only committed to her clients, but is committed to supporting her staff as well. “No matter how complicated a case may be, Kiran always has a thoughtful suggestion or idea that leaves me thinking, ‘why didn’t I think of that!’ Supervision with Kiran often feels therapeutic and her support, insight and expertise is something that I value so deeply.  Kiran’s ability to connect with her staff, colleagues and clients make her a serious gem!”  “Kiran has helped me and other clinicians working with families learn different ways of understanding very young children and better ways of talking to them and helping them express themselves. I am always impressed when Kiran helps me choose the words to ask a question or make a comment to a young child about a difficult situation, or choose the words to help a caretaker better understand that young child and his/her emotional experience. Kiran works tirelessly to bring this voice to the table when decisions are being made within all of the various systems and institutions involved in families’ lives”.

Kiran comes to this work following experience as a preschool teacher, foster care and preventive case worker, and infant mental health clinician who has worked across child and family systems, in the US and internationally. She has earned the respect and the confidence of even the most skeptical partners, and enjoys a vast fan club around the city for her passionate presence, her exemplary direct practice with, and her guidance to, others on behalf of very young children and their families.