Chyna Fernandez

My career in the Child and Family Wellbeing System started about 10 years ago in a way I never expected. Right out of college, I volunteered at the Children's Shelter working with their residential program with kids who had higher acuity needs and couldn't be placed in foster home settings. It was not the field I intended to go into at all, but I loved the shelter and children so much that I ended up working there, and that's really where my career began. I continued to work in different positions over the years - as a Parent Educator, Family Based Specialist with Child Protective Services, and in licensing for the State. When legislation moved to privatized foster care, my current organization SJRC Texas was awarded the contract in the rural counties for Community-Based Care, and I came over as a Case Care Specialist. I was really just wanting to engage and help foster youths get connected where they needed to be and ensure they got the services they needed. I've been with the company for 5 years now, and I've been in my current role as Regional Director for Bexar County for almost a year, since last August. No day looks the same in my position - my role is really to connect with other nonprofits, organizations, businesses, faith-based organizations, anyone and everyone who has the capacity to help fill gaps for our foster youth. A day could look like me going to events, going to coalition meetings, working individually with caseworkers and case managers to help make sure they get connected to resources for our children and families, or presenting about Community-Based Care to get people aware of what the needs are in the community.

I just graduated this past December with my Master's in Applied Psychology, and throughout my academic career, all of my research has related to my professional work. I have conducted research on how to increase effective recruitment for foster parents and trying to get youth of color adopted. It's been an absolute privilege to talk to different people and really try to get a better understanding of how we can increase effective adoption and recruitment for youth of color, because the disproportionality of youth of color in foster care is drastic.