Typically, DCFS requires that families remanded to its supervision complete parenting training before being reunited with their children. In Chicago, such parents are often referred to Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), a program run by The Chicago School Forensic Center.

Ralph Barrera was a sergeant in the Los Angeles Police Department when a bullet changed his life. Fired in the line of duty in accordance with his training and police department regulations, the bullet took the life of an offender—but it also took a toll on Barrera, who embarked on a decade-long battle with post-traumatic stress disorder and eventually confronted the reality that it was time for a career change.

To his parish in the Hispanic Chicago neighborhood of West Humboldt Park, he is known as Father Tom. But to patients at Saints Mary and Elizabeth Medical Center, where he works with cancer and AIDS patients as coordinator of the Supportive Care Program, he goes by Doctor Tom.

The different monikers underscore the dual roles that the Rev. Dr. Thomas N. Pelton balances as a priest and psychologist.