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Now a top executive, she has never lost a social worker's heart
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Although she has risen to high positions in the field of social service, Carolyn Risley Hill remembers where she came from. She is a social worker at heart, with an all-consuming goal of helping others. Ms. Hill currently works as Chief Executive Officer for Starkey, Inc. in Wichita, one of the largest community service providers for persons with developmental disabilities in Kansas. She came to the position after more than 20 years in child welfare, starting fresh out of college as a social worker and rising to social service chief in the Wichita SRS office. After a three-year stint as Area Director in |
"She started as a social worker in the field, and never lost that spark," said Debbie Hatfield, a social worker formerly with SRS but now with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment who did master's degree training under Ms. Hill. "She knew why we do what we do because she was out there with kids and families."
Another social worker who worked under Ms. Hill at SRS, Betty Glover, said it was not possible to work with her and forget the children. Ms. Glover is now an Episcopalian minister, working at Stormont-Vail Hospital.
"You have lots of paperwork and meetings, but she'd make it about a particular 15-year-old foster child who had been in many different foster homes," Ms. Glover said.
Ms. Glover remembered a birthday card project she worked on under Ms. Hill. The work was to send donated birthday cards to children in foster care.
"Often, she'd write personal notes with the cards, and she'd take
foster children to dinner," Glover remembered. "Carolyn may
be a nationally known person, but she is a social worker. And she loved
what social workers do."
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Bob McKeagney, vice-president of program operations for the Child Welfare League of America headquartered in Washington, D.C., said that connection to the field was a big reason he asked Ms. Hill to work for the League. In her six years, he said they worked together consulting with many states and even the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. |
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"Her experience in the field is one of the things I thought separated her from other people on a national basis," Mr. McKeagney said. "People could tell right away she'd done child welfare work, and that she understood the connection between policy decisions and practical decisions in the field. You need that connection."
Asked about the reason she is still perceived as a social worker despite many years as an administrator, Ms. Hill said she learned to care about people from her upbringing. Her mother and grandmother, neither of whom had much formal education, did their own local form of social work.
"My grandmother ran her own personal GA (General Assistance) program," Ms. Hill said. "She had nine children, her husband was deceased, and she had this great big house three blocks from the railroad tracks. People riding the rails ... she fed them and gave them a place to sleep in exchange for working in her garden.
"Then my mother's house was kind of the ‘Safe House' in Great Bend where we lived," said Ms. Hill. "Abused women and their kids would arrive in the middle of the night...the kids would come and get in bed with us. And my mother bought groceries for families when they were desperate."
John Alquest was the SRS Area Director in Wichita during Ms. Hill's early social worker years. He said she became his "right hand" because of the way she approached the work.
"She just sparkled," Mr. Alquest said. "She had so much
energy and joy about her. She made other people feel good about the work
they were doing."
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As commissioner for children's services at SRS, Ms. Hill was responsible for putting together a state plan for child welfare called the Family Agenda, which Mr. McKeangney called a great piece of work. "I think the Family Agenda is one of the best, most practical state plans I've ever seen," he said. |
Mrs. Hill said the Family Agenda worked because of the teamwork involved in putting it together. She said teams of SRS workers from across the state did everything from planning the training to putting together timelines.
"Staff was involved at every level, from the social service chiefs to the social workers to everybody," she said.
Using the Family Agenda as a planning document, in 1993 SRS was able to convince the Kansas Legislature to increase funding for child welfare, including a major increase in Family Preservation funding. Ms. Hill said a major reason for this was that everyone pushing for the increase used similar data.
"We were able to answer the same question the same way every time," she said. "That's one of the big problems a big agency sometimes has."
Ms. Hill said she gets inspiration from interaction with staff and the people served.
"As you move up, there is less opportunity with clients," she said. "But I've worked with good, dedicated, hard-working staff at Starkey, SRS, and the Child Welfare League," she said.
To show leadership, Ms. Hill said it is important to involve others.
"You have to tell people what's going on; get their input," she said. "I think that is really important. I also think you have to advocate for your staff. And I think it's important to be with staff. You can't lead from a distance."
Her legacy?
"I suppose you want to make a difference...make the right difference by doing the right thing," she said. "There is no limit to what an individual can accomplish. Anything is possible."
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