| NARCCW’s Director, Dr. Ronald Hughes,
received the Peter Forsythe Award for Leadership in Child Welfare
for his contributions to the field of public child welfare. The
Peter Forsythe Award is presented annually by the National Association
of Public Child Welfare Administrators (NAPCWA), an affiliate of
APHSA, to a person who exhibits leadership in the field of public
child welfare and in support of NAPCWA’s mission. The award
criteria include exemplary work at the national and regional levels
in support of child welfare agencies’ efforts to protect children
and support families. The award was presented at the American Public
Human Services Association’s 75th Conference in Washington,
D.C., on March 22, 2005. |
| "It
has been a rare privilege to work with many of you and your colleagues,
both past and present. I look with pride at the state training systems
to which we have been privileged to contribute, including Pennsylvania,
Wisconsin, Virginia, Utah, Indiana, and Oklahoma, to name a few.
I especially want to thank
my colleagues in Ohio. For 20 years we have worked with Ohio’s
Department of Job and Family Services, the Public Children Services
Association of Ohio, county directors, and Regional Training Center
directors and staff to improve child welfare practice. Ohio has
been the laboratory for the continuing development of some exceptional
child welfare programs and technologies over the last two decades—practices
and technologies adopted and adapted by many other states and
provinces, by the Child Welfare League of America, and by the
Council on Social Work Education.
I want to thank Barb Riley, Director of
the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, who now, as Director,
and over the last several years in other positions in the Department,
has provided the leadership and resources to support the development
of some remarkably creative child welfare programs. I must say
thanks to Rick Smith and Lyn Bissonnette at ODJFS, who have been
every contractor’s dream of fair and objective. And I want
to thank Crystal Allen, Executive Director of PCSAO, for her intelligence,
energy, and support over the years.
I want to acknowledge my tremendous debt
and gratitude to my colleague, Dr. Judith Rycus, easily one of
the most informed people in child welfare today.
Finally, I want to thank all of you. The
NAPCWA Peter Forsythe Leadership Award is the most important award
I will ever get, because it’s from the people who actually
do the work of protecting children from maltreatment.
Alfred Kadushin said of his love
of child welfare, 'There are few jobs where, at the end of the
day, you can say you have saved children’s lives. Child
welfare is one of them.' I am proud to be a part of child welfare.
I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and I look forward to
working with you for many years to come." |
