About

Katherine Buckley is a mother of four children and five grandchildren. She has always been involved in community activities and events and she has always been committed to supporting others. She has devoted a lot of her time listening and linking others to resources to help them improve their lives. Her goal has always been to support others in her community to help them succeed in life. Earlier in her own life, she became involved with the child welfare system due to substance use issues and her children were removed from her. She was able to successfully turn her life around and reunify with her children. Today, she is 18 years clean and sober.

Katherine’s life experiences have helped her grow and strengthen herself personally and as a parent. Ten years ago, the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services sought out Katherine and asked her to come to work as a Parent Partner. Through this job, she works with parents who are involved with the child welfare system by supporting them in helping to reunify with their children. In this role, she provides parent orientations to help them better understand and navigate the system and she also offers parent support groups.

In 2010, Katherine worked in partnership with Casey Family Programs on their Breakthrough Series Collaborative (BSC). The BSC was an innovative methodology that Casey developed to support its 2020 permanency and safe reduction strategies. Child welfare agencies in nine states partnered with their court systems and engaged birth parents with first-hand experience of the child welfare system, alumni of the foster care system, and community partners in developing practice changes that would positively impact the rate of timely reunification. While involved in this project, Katherine was able to meet other parents from different states and share ideas on how to make improvements to the child welfare system. She attended mock sessions with child welfare workers to help them gain a better understanding of the challenges and trauma that birth parents face while involved with the system. She felt that it was an amazing experience that helped social work staff gain a true understanding of how valuable a team approach can be between a child welfare worker and a Parent Partner in helping support parents in reunifying with their children. She also participated in numerous trainings and gained new knowledge relating to cultural awareness and strategies regarding trauma informed care.

Katherine continues to inspire parents by attending the Child and Family Team meetings in the office and at the home of the families. She feels it’s very important to get to their underlying needs and challenges. She strongly advocates for the parents to make sure that the same problem will not reoccur. She feels it’s a process and some families heal fast and some parents take longer to complete the process. Either way she makes sure that during the process the parent stays focused on their goal of being able to reunify and build a meaningful life for themselves and their families.

Katherine is a member of the Birth Parent National Network (BPNN) and looks forward to becoming more involved in projects on a national level.