leadership

Foster Youth in Action (FYA) is seeking a new executive director to take the reins of the 11-year-old organization that works to promote leadership opportunities for current and former foster youth. 

The New York-based Doris Duke Charitable Foundation invested nearly $6 million this month aimed at bolstering leadership in the child well-being sector. “Effective and diverse social sector leadership is critical for ending intergenerational cycles of poverty and persistently inequitable outcomes for families and children,” said Lola Adedokun, program director for child well-being at the foundation.

Since January, several new governors have hit the ground running with new leadership to oversee family services, maltreatment prevention, foster care and adoption. Here are a the states where new directors have already been announced for those spots.

John Kelly, the editor-in-chief of The Imprint, along with Chronicle reporter, Jeremy Loudenback, recently posted a well-written trilogy of articles discussing in detail the 12-year saga of the Katie A. v Bonta litigation in California.

James Payne led the dependency and juvenile courts in Marion County, Ind., for 20 years, and then left to help former Gov. Mitch Daniels overhaul the state’s child welfare agency. He is now with the Public Consulting Group (PCG), which provides financial and operational assistance to the public sector agencies involved in education, child welfare and a host of other issues.

Leaders at the New York-based Donaldson Adoption Institute (DAI) and its former CEO, Adam Pertman, all declined to discuss what exactly they disagreed upon regarding the future of the organization. But, it is clear that there was some disagreement at the institute, a leader in research on adoption practice and policy.

New York City Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio recruited Gladys Carrión, the head of the New York Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) to serve as commissioner of the city Administration for Children’s Services, the agency that oversees child welfare and juvenile justice.

The foster care alumni movement asserts that child welfare professionals must meet increasingly higher standards of knowledge the more they influence the lives of at-risk youth. This is especially true for non-alumni whose decisions affect the most foster children.