Curt DAchilles 

Mr. D’Achille has provided master’s level clinical counseling care for 33 years to several children’s residential facilities and shelters and has supervised clinical therapies in acute residential treatment to those suffering from emergency psychiatric, emotional and behavioral problems, substance and sexual abuse and addictions. He was also a member of the core team bringing the National Institute of Correction’s “Objective Jail Classification, Rehabilitation and Educational Programs" to inmates at the Broward County Sheriff’s Office in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.  He took the lead in establishing the first comprehensive and coordinated “Security Threat Group Initiative” in the Broward correctional facilities, providing for the identification, tracking and monitoring of security threat groups and street gang members throughout a system of over 4000 inmates - adults and youthful offenders. 

Mr. D’Achille has supervised a maximum-security boy’s lockdown facility in contract with the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice and the Department of Child Psychiatry, University of Miami.  Mr. D’Achille also assisted in setting up and establishing one of the first anonymous HIV/AIDS testing and counseling programs in the nation at the Howard Brown Clinic in Chicago Illinois.  While there he worked closely with writing and developing anonymous counseling and testing protocols, including psychosocial counseling guidelines, staff training and development on HIV/AIDS, in coordination with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the Cook County Health Department.  This where Mr. D’Achille began his work with the LGBTQ community directly. He also created outreach and counseling for special population on death and dying, hospice as continuum of “Best Care” and proactive health management along with bereavement/significant loss individual counseling and support groups.

His training seminars have included Treatment of Delinquency and Adolescent Sexual Offenders and, The Dynamics of Peer Relationships in a Treatment Milieu, University of Miami, Adolescent Development – Broward County Teacher’s Union, Human Sexuality, Florida International University, and Youthful Offenders – Broward Community College.  Mr. D’Achille has lectured on HIV/AIDS Counseling before the Illinois Department of Health; the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselor’s and Therapists (AASECT) St. Louis; the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine, Lutheran General Hospital, Park Ridge; and the Salvation Army’s world headquarters in Chicago, among others.  He has co-authored an article on HIV, AIDS: The Psycho-social Aspects of HIV/AIDS Care, Supplement to the Journal of the American Medical Association (Nov 1989) and spoke on Co-Factors and the Transmission of HIV; and Developing an Anonymous HIV Testing and Counseling Program, at the 7th Annual World AIDS Forum in San Francisco.  Mr. D’Achille also contracted with the American Medical Association as script consultant on its first HIV/AIDS training video. Curt has written several newspaper columns on health related issues for the CHICAGO DEFENDER and OUTLINES (1988-1989).  In 1998 he taught a course entitled, The Law and Youthful Offenders through Broward Community College and presented at the first annual Broward Sheriff’s Office National Conference on gangs and security threat groups.  In 1994-95 he also produced and hosted a community access program in Pompano Beach Florida called – Our Family Matters - that aired on Comcast cable television throughout South Florida. In 2003 he was an early associate collaborator in a study on community-based participatory research (CBPR) and perinatal birth outcomes by Darius Tandon of John Hopkins University.

Mr. D’Achille has been an active member in national politics and human rights and has served on the Board of Directors for the Palm Beach Human Rights Coalition, the Atlantic Coast Democratic Club, and other equal and human rights initiatives.  He served for 6 years on his condominium board and sat as member at large (2004) on the 15th Circuit Court of the Department of Juvenile Justice in Palm Beach County, Florida.

In recent years, Curt D’Achille has focused on substance rehabilitation and treatment in private clinics and began his own therapy practice contracting with Social Care Services focusing on mental health services to minorities, the LGBTQ community, and low-income adolescent and family services through Medicaid.