(Posted 2024 September)
Meet Dana!
Position: Social Services Supervisor, Foster Care and Adoption Program Placement and Resource Unit within the Children, Youth, and Families Division.
From a young age, I felt a calling to make a positive difference in the world. After working for a U.S. senator in the mid ‘90s, I decided that I would rather focus on helping individuals instead of working in the policy arena.
I shifted gears and received my master of social work in 1998 and have been working in many different capacities since that time. Over the course of my husband’s 30-year career in the U.S. Air Force, we moved 14 different times and lived and worked in many different locations.
Through it all my focus has mostly been in the area of child welfare. I believe that is where I can have the greatest impact. I believe that working collaboratively with the families and children we serve gives us the best opportunity to positively change lives.
I am so grateful to have worked with such amazing people, starting with the Fairfax County Health Department in a local elementary school in 2016. From there, I accepted a position with the Department of Family Services in 2019 in our Child Protective Services program. I learned so much about the incredibly important work that CPS specialists perform in helping families to make healthy changes in their lives.
The name of my unit is the Placement and Resource Unit, which is located within Foster Care and Adoption, Resource and Support. I have been a part of this unit for four years. I was promoted to the position of unit supervisor in the beginning of July 2024 with a team of three placement coordinators and three resource workers who support foster parents. I feel like my experience training, assessing, and helping foster and adoptive families over the years has prepared me well for this role.
Our placement team helps to find resource homes and/or higher levels of care for youth who need placements. Meanwhile, our resource workers partner with Foster Care and Adoption case carrying workers. Our resource workers provide support, education, and specialized training to our foster families so that they can be successful.
By working as a cohesive unit, our staff works diligently to help our resource (foster) families, the youth in care and our case-carrying staff. My favorite thing about the work that I do is that it affords me the ability to partner with amazing people every single day. We are always looking for more staff to join in the work we do to support children and families in foster care.
A fun fact about me is that when I previously volunteered in a no-kill dog and cat shelter in Arizona, the other volunteers called me the “Cat Whisperer.” I dedicated myself to working with the cats that had not been socialized. I spent hours trying to get them used to having a human presence around so that they might have better outcomes in the future.
Working for the Department of Family Services has provided many opportunities to develop myself, personally and professionally. So, join DFS. Come work with us in CYF. You can be a part of a workforce that is invested in improving the wellbeing of children and families in our community.