Patti VanWagoner
Deputy Director
Utah's Division of Child and Family Services
120 N. 200 West
Salt Lake City, UT 84103
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Utah
Patti VanWagoner, Deputy Director of Utah's Division of Child and
Family Services, is known in the State's human services programs as the
person who most lives by the lofty principles of their profession and
best demonstrates the effective skills needed to provide and implement
quality services and administrative practices to benefit children
and families. She has held many significant positions in the field of child
welfare, mostly in direct service to children, youth, and families.
Recently, the Executive Director asked her to take on the task of
building ethnic minority community partnerships.
Wherever she goes, Ms. VanWagoner earns compliments as the
consummate professional and the finest example of human services
expertise. Her effort to develop policies, rules, and guidelines that are
practical and motivate those required to follow them has proven a
mainstay in the development of child welfare practice in the State of
Utah. She works diligently to facilitate understanding of what is needed
to make kinship placements more successful, improving practices to
achieve better results for kin families.
In her current position as Deputy Director, Ms. VanWagoner directs
the State's program administrators. Her management of the program
component for the Division of Child and Family Services has been
innovative and exceptional. The consistency and quality of practice
guidelines has been enhanced significantly thanks to her leadership and
supervision. Ms. VanWagoner has worked effectively with partners,
exhibiting a knowledgeable and professional model of Division of Child
and Family Services leadership. She encourages and supports program
managers to create a cohesive program approach, while continuing to
be innovative within program areas; she provides support to the Utah
Foster Care Foundation to further develop their program in tandem
with the needs of the Division of Child and Family Services; and she
supports enhancements to the training process, such as piloting new
training curricula, and offers guidance for individual training and program
initiatives.
Patti VanWagoner is a visionary leader in the field of child welfare.
Always keenly aware of the realities and needs of children and families,
she combines insight from fieldwork with an extensive and well-articulated
appreciation of the philosophy of practice. In the midst of the
most trying and difficult tasks of our human services profession, Ms.
Van Wagoner maintains a positive outlook and manages to stay on
track, piloting any issue forward in both discussion and practice.
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