For the fourth quarter of FY21 we would like to recognize Chrissy Dempsey for Living the Mission of CHOICES. Chrissy has a HUGE heart and can-do attitude in helping families. Her smile is contagious and she makes everyone feel valued.
Chrissy dazzles us with her time management skills. She recently earned her Bachelor’s degree while working full time in our Parent Aide program. She also maintained interning in foster care, working in licensing and training. (All while raising a family) Upon graduation, she officially moved to our foster care team.
While working our Parent Aide program, she truly became a miracle worker with families. Offering patience, guidance, and support to help them meet their goals to reunify with their children. One family had significant home maintenance needs, and were not able to have visitation in their home for over a year. Showing up with a magic wand, cleaning supplies and a plan she worked alongside the parents to improve their living conditions. After three months, their kids were able to start in-home visitation and eventually reunified.
Chrissy has been innovative in creating a reward ticket system for families in this program as an incentive to keep appointments and work towards goals. From the beginning, she jumped right in to help organize fundraisers to help home-based families and piloted the most lucrative fundraiser for the department to meet basic family needs.
She has always been a cheerleader of CHOICES and eager to help anyway she can with group activities. Chrissy has welcomed the challenge of learning a new role as a foster parent assessor and trainer. Even if the training made her a bit nervous, she went all in studying the material and asking questions of peers prior to classes. Her unique experience in working with biological families is beneficial in preparing prospective parents for their fostering journey.
Chrissy exemplifies our core value of compassion. She cares so much about families, kids, and her coworkers and it shows in the relationships she builds. She truly meets families where they are and walks alongside them to reach new goals. We are thrilled to recognize her for her past work and her commitment to her future role in foster care. Chrissy’s impact is not a ripple, but a giant wave of positivity for CHOICES and our families.
