Dr. Barbara Palomino de Velasco is a licensed Florida psychologist and international First Responder Health Coach. She started her career at the Department of Corrections, Probation and Parole Services (DOC/P&P), Miami, Florida as a probation officer. She also was an electronic monitoring and sex offender officer. She left the department after serving as administrator supervising programs for the Department. She was subsequently recruited by one of largest substance abuse programs in the state of Florida, Bridges of America, to start a community-based residential substance abuse program for correctional non-violent offenders. A few years later she was again recruited to administer The Village South Program Residential Substance Program, which served over 200 state and federal court-ordered patients.
During this time, she was also pursuing a doctorate in psychology with an emphasis in forensics. Upon her doctoral degree being conferred she started working in a private practice in the field of violent and sexual crimes. Her clinical/forensic practice mostly focused on forensic psychological evaluations: competency, insanity, capital punishment, psychosexual and risk assessment evaluations. She conducted 17 years in the provision of clinical/forensic therapy, and was a court-approved Forensic Expert in Florida.
In 2001, she moved with her family to Sarasota, Florida where she was subsequently hired at the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office as their police psychologist. She again started a private practice which focused in the area of police psychology. She served as a consultant to numerous law enforcement agencies, conducting Pre-Employment, Fitness for Duty Evaluations, and as a crisis responder to law enforcement personnel.
Presently, she responds to critical incidents internationally providing training in the areas of law enforcement suicide prevention, critical incident peer support, and best practices for law enforcement families. In 2018, she became a Diplomate in Police Psychology.
Currently, she is the Program Coordinator, MS./Ph.D. in Forensic Psychology at Walden University. Her current research focuses are in the efficacy of creating training programs for law enforcement families, treatment protocols for law enforcement and military personnel. Recently, she started conducting Zoom Webinars on resiliency and peer support to first responders and their families through Crisis Systems Management LLC.
She lives in the North Georgia Mountains, and during her leisure time she loves reading, cooking gourmet meals with her husband (Ret. 39 year LE) and daughter, and debriefing with her dogs.