2008 Annual Conference

Award Winners

Award Luncheon, Thursday, May 22, 2008

Outstanding Agency Award: (photo not available)

Odyssey Family Counseling Center, College Park, Georgia

For an agency that has demonstrated outstanding services to children and families.

The Odyssey has been helping families for well over 30 years. Since 1990, Odyssey has been working with teenagers to address the problems of substance abuse. Odyssey was the first outpatient program in this region and to date is the most accessible. Even through the trying struggles of the new Fee for Service Model, Odyssey has managed to raise enough money to open a new Women’s and Children’s Center in College Park, Georgia. Working with families through substance abuse issues, mental health issues, victims of violence, and parenting issues, just to name a few.

Outstanding Social Services Award: (photo not available)

Karen Cramer

GA HOPE

A social service worker who has made outstanding contributions in the field of Child Welfare.

Ms. Cramer is an extremely hard worker. She always puts the children she works with first, never thinking of herself, only what she can do for others. She is always willing to help out and take a case that she is not going to benefit from financially. Karen will do overnight stays whenever needed and she once stayed a whole month at a hotel with one of the children she worked with.

I have never known a heart so big and brave

That to the children her whole self she gave

Not as a job or obligation in hand

But with a loving want to and a YES WE CAN

No job to big or small

As long as it meant helping the babies, she’d take them all

Such a kind and gentle soul

Never letting the hardship take its toll

Always happy and positively polite

Whether it’s 8 am to 12 midnight

Our agency would never be the same without this angel we call Karen

To whom even our faces she brings a big smile for sharing.

An individual who has made outstanding contributions by supporting and leading her staff and agency.

Ms. Levy defines the true meaning of social work. As a supervisor and a leader, Ms. Levy serves as a role model for her employees and her agency staff. She provides her staff with great knowledge and understanding of why we do what we do as social workers. Ms. Levy makes herself available when needed to provide guidance and supervision to her employees. She empowers us, so that we may empower others.

Outstanding Volunteer Award (photo not available)

Kay and Walter Fife

Georgia AGAPE, Inc.

A volunteer who has made outstanding contributions to making a difference for at-risk children and families.

Walter and Kay Fife, of Good Samaritan CPR Services have been sharing their time and teaching talents with the families of Georgia AGAPE for the past four years. They have chosen to teach CPR and First Aid skills to families without pay and without little recognition for themselves or their family. They work together as a family team and use personal stories from their own family to emphasize the importance of mastering CPR and First Aid skills.

When Walter and Kay teach, they always provide their own equipment and refuse to accept any form of payment for their efforts. In addition, they have taught classes on an individual basis when a foster parent was unable to attend a larger training class. Walter and Kay have provided over 202 foster parents with CPR and First Aid training which translates to over 1, 212 hours of training over the last four years!

Pete has been intimately involved in all aspects of Georgia’s juvenile justice system for the past three decades. Until his retirement on March 31, 2008, he has spent 32 years in a wide variety of roles. Beginning in 1977, Pete directed the Gwinnett County Community Treatment Center (CTC), a community based intervention for serious juvenile offenders. After 7 years of service in the community, Pete took a 180 degree turn and took up the challenge of running a juvenile detention facility, the Clayton RYDC, the state’s oldest, smallest, and most run-down detention center. Pete made it his personal mission to transform Clayton as much as possible, into a safe and positive environment for youth.

He planned and designed the new state-of-the-art replacement detention center but after 5 years in lockup, Pete again felt the call of the community; and in 1990 was paroled and became Georgia’s Juvenile Justice Specialist.

After 13 years of direct care experience in Georgia’s juvenile justice system, Pete saw the unique opportunity to actually make system-wide improvements by beginning with small, local projects and building upward and outward. Through his role as Juvenile Justice Specialist, he encouraged Georgia’s State Advisory Group to fund small common-sense projects, those most likely to succeed and those better able to affect larger numbers of juveniles. His approach was to improve the SAG’s grants-making process and thereby improve the state’s juvenile justice system. He stressed a user-friendly process that allowed smaller, local agencies the ability to compete on equal footing with larger agencies.

In recognition of his efforts, in 1995 the Georgia Juvenile Services Association presented Pete with the Howard K. Ables award, their annual honor presented in recognition for outstanding contributions to Georgia’s juvenile justice system.

Seeing the dearth of funding for local juvenile courts to implement community-based programming, Pete successfully re-directed the lion’s share of the state’s JABG program into an ongoing statewide grant with the Georgia Council of Juvenile Court Judges.

Since 1998, this has resulted in $16.5 million dollars for local juvenile court programming such as: Community work projects, education and tutoring assistance, counseling and mental health screening of youth, as well as non-residential therapeutic care.

145 of Georgia’s 159 counties participate in the program, benefiting more than 7,000 youth each year.

In 2001 Pete became the Executive Director of the Children and Youth Coordinating Council and he expanded the agency’s commitment to "Helping Communities Help Children." He re-focused all programs and services so they were designed to reduce high-risk behaviors of children and youth through effective programming, and education. 

Through Pete’s efforts, Georgia has seen improvements in conditions of confinement for juveniles and a move to more rational detention decisions through his promulgation of a statewide detention assessment instrument (DAI).

Using carrot approach (via grant awards) to coax reforms, Pete has locally and incrementally changed countless lives while always keeping Georgia’s SAG focused on the big picture.

He has worked as a tireless educator to Georgians on the intimate relationship between child welfare and juvenile justice in this state, and provided support to other states and served as a resource to other states efforts.

Pete has won several awards, including an Emmy Award in 2003, and a Telly Award in 2005, and he was also honored in 2005 by the Boys and Girls Club Association for his significant contributions.

For a board member who has gone above and beyond the required tasks asked of the board member and made outstanding contributions to the other board members and the agency he serves.

Scott has served on the Vashti Center Board for 6 years. During this time he has served as Chairman, Vice Chairman, and Treasurer. Several years ago, Vashti encountered some tough fiscal challenges that required a major debt reduction and management restructuring. Scott’s keen financial management abilities were largely responsible for restructuring of programs, cost containment, employee benefits management, debt reduction, and later, careful investments of income. During one period, as the board searched for a new CEO, Scott was in the Vashti offices almost daily to advise. Today Vashti is a debt free agency, program size has almost tripled, we are fiscally strong, and no one is more responsible for this strengthening than Mr. Sterling.

When tough decisions had to be made, Scott has been able to make them. Further, he has gained the respect and admiration of the staff because his first thoughts and concerns were always the children we serve. Throughout numerous changes, Scott remained steadfast in his conviction that programs would never suffer because of fiscally challenging times

Scott has served for 5 years on the Halcyon Home for Battered Women, and for 6 years on The Vashti Center Board. He and his beautiful wife, Lynn, have served with Open Door Adoption Agency by caring for children as they awaited delivery to their adoptive parents.

The Gail Bayes Award recognizes one individual who over a lifetime of service, has been an advocate and visionary for children. This award is given in honor of Gail Bayes who served children at risk in Monroe, Georgia for over twenty years through The Alcove, a homeless and runaway emergency shelter for children. Ms. Bayes epitomized a love and care for children demonstrated by advocacy and vision.

Elaine DeCostanzo is not a household word in the field of child welfare. However, her fingerprints are all over every major initiative of the State in child welfare. She co-chaired the Governor’s Action Group for Safe Children in 2002. This report has formed the basis for nearly every initiative of child welfare over the last half decade; such as, the importance of assessment driven services, outcome measures, appropriate and timely services for children, fair and equitable funding for providers, comprehensive mental health services for children, and building capacity for those services. Her vision was that Georgia could do the right thing for children!

Elaine facilitated the First Lady’s Children’s Cabinet, which was the first time in recent memory that the First Lady’s Cabinet brought together department heads that touched the lives of children, including: DJJ, DHR, their Divisions of DFCS, and MHDDAD, DCH, and DOE. The vision was that children should be served in a coordinated fashion, not segregated in silos.

She is the Chair of the KidsNet Collaborative, which seeks to implement a “System of Care” model in the delivery of mental health services for children. The vision is that this model will be rolled out in all counties in Georgia, bringing together those that touch the lives of children. This model is family inclusive, child centered, and community driven.

Eugene Calhoun served Georgia’s children as the Director of the Office of Regulatory Services. His collaborative spirit facilitated the development of countless programs in Georgia that serves children. It is in this spirit of lifetime achievement that we give this award. The lives of Eugene Calhoun and this year’s recipient crossed at the very spot that brought this person to Georgia over 20 years ago. Eugene Calhoun applied for the same Executive Director’s position as this award recipient.

This year’s recipient of the Eugene Calhoun Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Steve Rumford!

Steve Rumford is often referred to as “The Father” of our modern association. Twenty three years ago, Steve Rumford was elected for the first time as the president of the Georgia Association of Homes and Services for Children. As president, one of his first acts was to move the Association towards having a larger role in advocacy, lobbying, and training. He hired their first executive director and transitioned the Association from a collection of group homes, into an organization that encompassed a complete continuum of services, serving over 300 children per day.

When Steve Rumford assumed an Executive role at the Methodist Home for Children and Youth, in Macon, he took on a group home that served 23 children on a campus of dilapidated buildings, demoralized staff, and no vision for the future. Accreditation came immediately with both COA and the Eagles Program. Since then, fifteen new buildings have been built, and the Methodist Home provides services throughout the southern region of Georgia, with six programs statewide. The Methodist Home has a nationally recognized training center, which serves 20,000 people each year, both public and private.

Steve’s leadership has been evident in the National Center for Professional Certification, the Georgia Academy, United Methodist Association of Health and Welfare Association, and many others. He has served as GAHSC’s president two times, and there is not a more worthy recipient for the Eugene Calhoun Lifetime Achievement Award than Steve Rumford!