Who is Tend?
Tend is Me, Ali (Al) Smith, LCSW!
Who I Am
I’m a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and mental health clinician specializing in supporting young humans, their parents, and their families as they grow. My work centers on the early roots of wellbeing—those tender seasons from pre-conception through childhood where connection, attunement, and support matter most.
How I Got Here
I began my career not in an office, but outdoors, leading wilderness expeditions and teaching through experiential and Montessori-based approaches. Those years shaped everything about the way I now understand people. I watched young humans thrive when given structure and freedom, challenge and safety, guidance and room to explore. I learned how resilience is built, how leadership emerges, and how healing happens in relationships long before it happens in words.
Wilderness therapy and experiential education taught me to trust children’s innate wisdom, their creativity, and their drive toward growth. They also showed me how profoundly a caring adult - or a caring community - can shift the trajectory of a young person’s life. That realization is what ultimately pulled me toward social work: I wanted to understand people more deeply, support families more fully, and ground my work in strong clinical foundations.
When I entered the mental health field, I began by working primarily with adolescents. Like many clinicians, I felt drawn to the ages when I could have used more support—and the work was deeply meaningful. I loved watching teens and tweens take risks, stretch into new versions of themselves, and build trust in the therapeutic relationship.
But what kept catching my attention was the parent work happening alongside it. The subtle shifts caregivers made—supported through periodic sessions, small mindset changes, and their own commitment to growth—often created the most dramatic changes in their child’s life. It became clear: supporting parents is supporting kids.
That realization, paired with discovering the truth that there was space and a need for those who want to work with children, drew me home to play therapy.
Meet Our Interns
Emmi Burke
Clinical Intern
I’m a Master of Social Work student at Colorado State University with a heart for helping children feel safe, understood, and confident in who they are. I believe that movement, creativity, and connection to nature can be powerful tools for supporting emotional growth, and I love bringing these elements into my work with kids in gentle, playful ways.
I love working with children and use play as a natural language for expressing big feelings, building confidence, and making sense of the world. My goal is to create a warm, welcoming space where children feel seen and parents feel supported and included.
I find so much joy in celebrating each child’s curiosity, resilience, and growth, and I feel honored to walk alongside your family as your child learns, explores, and thrives.
Sarah Roseberry
BSW Intern
I am a Bachelor of Social Work student at Colorado State University with a passion for supporting youth and families through life’s challenges. I am committed to creating spaces where young people feel safe, heard, and valued.
I plan to pursue my Master of Social Work at the University of Denver, where I plan to work in a trauma-focused setting supporting youth and adults as they process difficult experiences, build resilience, and connect with their strengths.
Why Play Therapy?
Play therapy is an evidence-based, developmentally grounded approach that lets children do therapeutic work in the language they know best: play. It’s also, to put it gently…pure magic
In the playroom, I’ve watched children tend to their own emotional wounds with surprising intuitiveness, strengthen their sense of self, reconnect with caregivers, and grow into more confident members of their families and communities. That magic—and the meaningful science behind it—pulled me toward earlier and earlier touchpoints in a child’s life: conception, pregnancy, infancy, toddlerhood, and the building blocks of childhood.
Why Tend?
I created Tend Play Therapy & Family Wellness because I believe in beginning at the roots. If children are the sprouts, caregivers are the soil—and I see my role as offering the sun, the rain, and steady companionship along the way.
Parenting and caregiving can be beautiful, disorienting, exhausting, and isolating. It can feel like everyone else has the manual and you somehow missed it.
The truth? This job is not easy, and we are not meant to do it alone.
Who We Support
Whether you are:
Preparing to welcome a child and wanting support through the journey,
A parent whose child could benefit from another caring adult (and who might need support, too)
A tween or teen navigating the long bridge toward adulthood, or
An educator or childcare provider seeking new tools and perspectives…
You are welcome here.