Chief Executive Officer, Family Support Services of North Florida Inc.
Mission
The mission of Family Support Services of North Florida Inc. is to be the leader in providing safety, stability and quality of life for all children by working with the community to strengthen the family unit.
Serving Jacksonville
Family Support Services is a Jacksonville-based nonprofit organization created in 2002.
Those served
Family Support Services serves Duval and Nassau counties, providing community-based care as the lead agency for foster care, adoption and family preservation. In fiscal year 2010-11, Family Support Services:
• Served 1,634 children in care; 923 in out-of-home care and 711 served through in-home care.
• Provided prevention services to 2,495 at-risk families.
• Placed 197 foster children with adoptive families; on average, 133 foster children are available for adoption at any given time.
• Provided independent living services to 287 former foster youth who aged out of foster care.
• Supervised more than 375 licensed foster homes or group homes.
Biggest challenge
Making sure our community’s children are always safe, ensuring that families are preserved and stay together, and providing our employees with an environment that makes Family Support Services a great place to work.
Biggest satisfaction
Seeing a child safely reunified with his or her family or the thrill of an adoption.
Hometown
Kearny, N.J.
First experience with community service
I’ve been involved in volunteer work since the beginning of my career, including working with the Jaycees, serving on United Way appropriations committees, building houses with Habitat for Humanity, and many other service projects and organizations. I’m actively involved as a volunteer with church and with local and national military organizations. Through the years, my wife, Mary, and I fostered 35 children. We’re the proud parents of five children, two of whom we adopted.
Your job before Family Support Services
I served in executive management in the telecommunications industry for more than 25 years, including COO for three wireless startup companies; most recently, before joining Family Support Services in 2008, president and COO of Urban Communicators PCS in Virginia.
Upcoming events
Today: Advocacy Day in Tallahassee. Foster parents, adoptive parents, kinship caregivers and other advocates for children — and the children themselves — converge on the Capitol to meet with legislators and share their stories, to impress upon them the importance of continued support for services and programs to care for youth in the child welfare system. It also includes educational activities and information meetings.
Contact information
www.fssjax.org
421-5800