At Global Vision Technologies we work every day with dedicated case workers who inspire us to look beyond fame and fortune to a deeper commitment. Tina Cawley, the AdoptUS Kids caseworker for the month of May, is one of those caseworkers.
Tina is an adoption social worker for the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families in Hyannis. She was nominated as May’s caseworker for her work with children in foster care and with foster and adoptive parents.
“Her true caring and commitment will be with the children even as they become adults themselves," wrote Katherine Kurisko the supervisor who nominated Tina. "They will always remember the adoption social worker who was committed to finding them a permanent, loving home and a worker who would not settle for any family, but rather the right match. Cawley demonstrates particular sensitivity to the traumatic pasts of the children on her caseload. She understands not only the trauma that children face when being separated from their birth families, but also how failed placements reopen those wounds."
The trauma-informed care that Tina practices is an awareness of causes and effects of trauma in children and their caregivers. It advocates an approach to trauma survivors that helps them recognize trauma symptoms and acknowledge the role that trauma plays in their lives.
“I always feel the weight of that,” Tina Cawley says. "I love getting to the time and date when we can go to court and make it official,” she says. “It can be emotional, especially with older kids, ones I have been working with for five or six years. It’s so rewarding. You just hope, at the end of the day, that you did find the right home for them.”
Dedication to a child’s welfare is not just a passing notion for Tina Cawley. It’s in her DNA.“I was always drawn to that aspect...helping kids,” she says. After graduating from Saint Joseph’s College of Maine, she initially worked with at-risk youth, but transitioned into working in adoption. She has been with the department for 16 years.
Tina Cawley’s dedication to serving traumatized children, although exceptional, is not unusual among the social workers we work with every day. Like Tina, the dedication of all the case workers we know inspires us every day.
