Staff Spotlight
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| When Barbara speaks about children, her passion for advocacy literally permeates her entire being. "Any change has to start with children," she says, "in order to make a change in society."
Although born in upstate New York in Schnectady, Barbara spent most of her formative years in Friendswood, Texas. After graduating from Friendswood High School, she headed to the University of Houston where she majored in Psychology with a minor in Sociology. The fascination with "social work" grew as she discovered she loved the child psychology classes she took. Not surprisingly, after college, she signed on with Children's Protective Services. She not only learned a lot, but became alarmed at the problems she was confronted with daily. Barbara says there are extremely "high caseloads" and too many layers of bureaucracy. And although there are many good workers at Children's Protective Services, Barbara notes there are bad ones too. "But when you're working for children, there is no room for bad case work," she said pointedly. Another drawback Barbara mentioned was the fact that as a caseworker, it was very common not to see a case through to the end. Unfulfilled, she headed to DePelchin Children's Center where she shined as Foster Care Intake Coordinator, earning the Texas Foster Care Worker of the Year Award in 1999. Ironically, by the time she received the award, she had already decided to join Justice for Children. She said, "Justice for Children provided the opportunity to branch out in my desire to better the lives of children as far as advocacy goes. JFC takes advocacy to the legislative level." "And," she added, "I have an opportunity to work with children who are failed by the protective agencies. I just don't know of any other agencies that do that." |