When Real Solutions Can Be No Solutions

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Those who author psychological evaluations—or provide therapy to parents and children—are required to be a psychologist, licensed or registered in some capacity with the California Board of Psychology. According to local psychologist Neal Ribner—who occasionally receives feedback from Real Solutions regarding his clients—if the person performing the evaluation isn’t a psychologist, he or she must be an intern or psychological assistant working under the tutelage of a psychologist.

Griffin isn’t any of these. Yet according to Rosie Vargas, former director of the children’s program at Real Solutions and now a competitor in the National City area as president of Affordable Family & Children’s Services, Griffin constantly writes psych reports.

“They are called child/parent interaction reports,” says Vargas. “In fact, Susan told me, ‘These are mini-psych reports.’ They are not supervised visitation reports. She also conducts child and child/parent therapy sessions.”

On Griffin’s résumé and in statements she made under oath for a deposition in October 2001 (during a bitter custody fight in which Griffin’s reports influenced the outcome), Griffin said she was a Ph.D. candidate in psychology at California Coast University, where she had already received her master’s degree. She also said her clinical work at Real Solutions was supervised by Dr. Robert Simon, a board member and staff member.

Barbara Posthuma, registrar at California Coast University in Santa Ana, says Griffin enrolled on October 7, 1994, in the school’s concurrent M.S./Ph.D. program in psychology. But neither program has been completed, and no degrees have been awarded. Because CCU is a “distance learning” university—composed of correspondence courses—students work at their own speed and take exams at home. Posthuma acknowledged that Griffin is still active, which means she’s completed at least one course in a two-year period.

However, Griffin has no assigned faculty supervisor because she hasn’t begun work toward her Ph.D. yet, says Posthuma. “There is no supervisor, per se, until they begin their Ph.D. research,” she explains.

The school is not regionally accredited either, and Griffin acknowledged that in her deposition, saying, “I’m going to stay enrolled there and finish with the hope that they’ll [CCU] be able to resolve the problems.” But CCU isn’t resolving anything. Posthuma says you have to have a campus to be accredited; CCU has no plans to change its status from a distance learning university.

Griffin also claims to have received a bachelor’s degree in behavioral sciences from National University in 1995. The registrar’s office at National says no such degree was awarded. Although a Susan L. Griffin received a degree in 1985, her middle name was Louise, not Lynn, which is the Real Solutions director’s middle name. And that degree was in business, not behavioral sciences.

Under aggressive questioning by La Mesa attorney Daniel Grunbaum during that October deposition, Griffin said she merely “assisted” Simon on psychological evaluations and that Simon supervised her clinical assessments. Vargas, who worked at Real Solutions for a year, says Griffin rarely worked with Simon. “He was never there, not when I was there. She did them herself.”

Simon declined to answer questions about his work at Real Solutions, instead referring all calls to fellow board member Janice Stocks, who had instructed Simon not to answer any questions.

In fact, San Diego Magazine requested interviews with Griffin and Real Solutions board members 10 times, by e-mail, phone and fax. Griffin refused to respond, instead asking satisfied parents to call the magazine and speak positively about her and Real Solutions. (All of those parents currently have custody of their children, and some are volunteers for and financial contributors to Real Solutions.) The Real Solutions board member who controls media access, Janice Stocks, a family law attorney with Stocks & Fentin, insisted the magazine not contact Real Solutions staff members, who had been instructed not to answer our questions.

The attention now focused on Real Solutions had its start at a San Diego County Board of Supervisors meeting in May, when Bonnie Russell—the noncustodial parent of a 14-year-old—spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting and demanded an investigation of the organization. In June, Russell, a Del Mar resident, was ordered by a San Diego Family Court judge to cease all contact with her daughter.

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