Each month UMFS recognizes one of our employees as the Unwavering Champion of the Month. This award celebrates the UMFS mission and how our employees bring that mission to life. Our mission: UMFS is an unwavering champion for high-risk children and families, collaborating with communities to help them reach their full potential.
Our Unwavering Champion for September is Brittany Stevens. Brittany is a cottage manger in the UMFS Child & Family Healing Center. CFHC is a 24-hour intensive residential treatment center, working with children who are struggling with behavioral, emotional, or developmental challenges or autism and other neurological differences. Through family-focused and youth guided treatment plans, CFHC puts kids on the road to academic, emotional, and social success.
Brittany manages Cottage 3, which serves boys from ages 11 to 13. Cottage managers have a very important role. Children in the Child & Family Healing Center spend a lot of time in school and with their therapists, but they spend the most time in their cottage. The cottage manager and youth counselors are on the front line working with the children, and the cottage staff are a critical link for the therapists.
As cottage manger, Brittany provides leadership, coaching and support for the youth counselors, and she helps set the tone for the cottage. She does a wonderful job. As Youth Counselor Chantel Wood shared, “Brittany has worked tirelessly to not only improve her cottage, but to improve morale across campus with her nurturing approach. She has mastered relationship building, and has greatly inspired her team and others to come together for the benefit of our youth.”
CFHC Program Director Sheena Lyle has also been very impressed by Brittany’s work. “Brittany is always looking for new solutions. She is very creative and has a lot of energy. She doesn’t give up.”
Thank you Brittany Stevens for being an unwavering champion for high-risk children and families!
To learn more about cottage life, see A Day in the Life of a Youth Counselor.