CLEVELAND HTS. – James H. McAuley, founder and past executive director of Family Pride of Northeast Ohio, worked with thousands of children and their families for 50 years as a family therapist and social worker.
After being asked by local school districts and a county judge to look into ways to combat a growing mental health problem among young people in 2003, McAuley founded and became executive director of Family Pride, a Geauga County mental health agency in Chardon. Family Pride’s clients receive intensive in-home clinical interventions on at-risk children as well as their entire family.
“Mr. McAuley’s clinical interventions became the foundation for an accredited agency with exceptional standards, staff and support within the community,” according to Family Pride’s published history. The agency now works with more than 700 individuals each year in Cuyahoga, Lake, Geauga and Ashtabula counties.
At 79, McAuley refused to retire from a lifetime of social work, particularly social justice, despite a number of medical setbacks in recent years. Most recently, as a pastoral associate at Communion of Saints Parish in Cleveland Heights, McAuley helped establish a prison ministry to support and counsel family members whose loved ones are imprisoned. He also helped establish the Ignatian Spirituality Project, which offers spiritual retreats to the homeless and trains formerly homeless men and women to assist in giving retreats.
McAuley was a case manager, family therapist, adult basic education teacher, consultant, clinical supervisor and program director. He was a licensed independent social worker and licensed chemical dependency counselor.
McAuley, of Cleveland Heights, died Dec. 13 at the Cleveland Clinic from a brain hemorrhage.
He started out as a second-grade teacher at St. Mary Magdalen Elementary School after graduating from John Carroll University in 1961.
McAuley’s social justice pursuits began a year later when he entered the U.S. Peace Corps, attended Latin American Studies programs at St. Louis University, then headed to Honduras for three years. He did social work for the National Social Welfare Agency, worked at a prison, a pediatric clinic and a hospital. He also taught sociology for three years at the D’Antoni Hospital School of Nursing in La Ceiba. McAuley remained in Honduras for two more years as operations manager and pilot at LANSA, S.A..
McAuley spoke at a Peace Corps celebration in 1987 in Washington D.C. at the Capitol’s Rotunda.
“President Kennedy’s Peace Corps vision has touched us all at home and aboard, to make us richer in our personal endeavors to use peace and development to effect social policy, to resolve common problems, and to develop programs that benefit us all,” McAuley said.
McAuley returned to Cleveland as a social worker and community activist at St. Patrick Catholic Church on Bridge Ave. and taught adult education for the Cleveland School District until 1972. For the next 22 years he worked with delinquents and their families for the Ohio Department of Youth Services providing, counseling, sex offender treatment, career planning and alcohol and drug dependency treatment. He also returned to school and obtained a Master Degree in Social Science Administration from Case Western Reserve University in 1985.
McAuley was a social worker, youth counselor, clinical supervisor, program director and consultant for the Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry; a case manager, therapist and supervisor in the family preservation unit at Beech Brook. He was a board member, volunteer and consultant on strategic planning and development for 25 years at the West Side Community Mental Health Center.
The former director of Faith Justice at Communion of Saints prepared a resume this December for yet another of the more than a dozen pilot programs he had initiated. He described his health as stable, not healthy; but that he does very well physically as a mental health professional. He noted he wore a health alert emergency unit, but had never had to activate it.
McAuley is survived by his wife of 46 years, Joan Begin McAuley, daughter Catherine McAuley Kenehan (Robert), of Strongsville, grandsons, Brendan and Liam; brothers, Thomas of Middlefield, and Robert of Seven Hills, and sisters, Carolyn Mann, of Troy Township, Suzanne Higgins, Ann Turner and Kathleen Clark of Tucson, Ariz.