Community and Therapeutic Recreation
Ms. Blanchfield received a Bachelor of Science degree in Community and Therapeutic Recreation in 2013 with a specialization in therapeutic recreation.

She currently works at Cone Health as a Recreation Therapist where she works with inpatient acute crisis stabilization for children and youth. She is also pursuing her Master’s of Arts in Teaching with a concentration in special education at Western Carolina University.

As her nominator wrote, “she has a driving passion to make a difference for individuals with severe and persistent mental illness”.

In the few short years since she graduated, Ms. Blanchfield has restructured Cone’s Recreation Therapy program to make it an effective treatment service for this population and aligning it to licensing guidelines and standards of practice.

She also designed and is implementing the use of a STEM intervention that has shown improvement in therapeutic outcomes of self-esteem, communication, problem solving, team building, coping skills, and anger and stress management in children with behavioral health issues. In addition, she has initiated other evidence-based interventions such as Animal Assisted Therapy, aromatherapy and leisure education.