Hudson resident named new vice president at Advocates

Advocates, a Framingham-based provider of services to individuals facing life challenges, announced that Brenda Miele Soares, of Hudson, was appointed vice president of behavioral health services.

Soares has had a long career as a therapist and social worker in the Greater Boston area and in 1990 became clinical director of the former Alternative Home Inc., of Newton, which merged with Advocates in 1999. Following a year overseeing an Alzheimer’s unit in Marlborough, Soares rejoined Advocates. She began overseeing the mental health division in 2003, serving approximately 400 residential clients. In 2008, she joined the senior management team when she was named director of psychiatric rehabilitation services. Soares holds a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from Emerson College and a Master of Social Work from Boston College. She is certified as an alcoholism counselor and a dialectical behavioral therapist and has given papers and presentations on risk management and dialogical practice to conferences and symposia across the U.S. and in Norway. She and her 30-member team are the first in the U.S. to be certified to provide Open Dialogue services based upon a Finnish model that provides an alternative to traditional mental health approaches. Soares has worked to institute mental health services for men and women who are deaf through Massachusetts’ Deaf Blind Respite program. Earlier this year, she received a certification from the Institute for Nonprofit Management and Leadership at Boston University’s Graduate School of Management. She is a board member and Secretary of the Massachusetts Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association.