Foster Care & Adoption Services
Lake County Job & Family Services
Meet Our Team
Dedicated To Serving The Community
When you consider fostering or adoption through Lake County Job & Family Services, it’s important that you always know you have the support of a dedicated team of people. Below is brief overview of the folks you’ll be interacting with during your journey with us.
Gene Tetrick
I have worked with Lake County Department of Job and Family Services for the past 25 years. During that time, I have worked with foster and adoptive parents for 23 of those years. I am also an adoption assessor, who is approved to write home studies. In 2011, I was promoted to the supervisor of our foster care and adoption unit. I have had the honor throughout my career of helping children find safe places to be when things weren’t safe at home and finding them permanency through adoption when they could not be reunified with their families. Foster care plays an integral part in the lives of children who enter care, whatever their age, as it provides a foundation of stability, attachment, and guidance. I have had the great fortune of working with some of the greatest people in our community and look forward to continuing this in our shared desire to keep children safe.
Michelle Edwards
I am Michelle Edwards, and I have worked as a social worker with the Lake County Department of Job and Family Services since December 2004. From December 2004 until December 2022, I worked as an ongoing social worker primarily with families and children who were court involved. While working in this position, I worked side by side with foster parents and became interested in learning how to assess and license foster and relative homes. Since joining the foster care/adoption unit in January 2023 I have enjoyed meeting getting to know already established resource families, meeting new prospective foster families and relatives who are interested in caring for children in the foster care system. Fostering is about loving others and helping by fostering a child. A foster parent can play a pivotal and consistent role during a difficult time in a child’s life. Foster families can also become resource families for children involved in the foster care system when they continue to maintain a relationship (when safe) with a child’s family should reunification occur. It is rewarding to help families understand for children in their care. Many times, resource family become supports to parents or relatives. By becoming a resource family, foster parents may be able to maintain connections with children who have been placed into their home and form connections with families and support them in their lives. This is very rewarding to me as foster families have the power to make a difference in a child’s story.
Bailey Pastva
I have a B.S. in Criminal Justice and Political Science and a M.S. in Family and Human Development. I have been working in the human services field since graduating with my undergrad in 2015. I have worked alongside Lake County’s youth as a juvenile corrections officer, been an advocate for sexual assault survivors, and coordinated sexual assault response teams across multiple counties in Northeast Ohio prior to joining Lake County Job and Family Services.
I joined Lake County Job and Family Services in 2021 as an intake social worker. In 2022, I transitioned to the substitute care team – a unit that was near and dear to my heart. My family had personal experiences working with the substitute care team of Lake County through kinship care, foster care, and adoption during various times in my life. As a social worker, I can recognize where there were opportunities for learning in my own family’s experience and use this as a teaching moment during the home study process and beyond with the foster and adoptive families I work with. My experiences allow me to empathize with the families I work with, whether it be for the good, the bad, or the ugly.
While there are difficult parts to this job, it is promising when a foster/adoptive parent and birth parent create a connection. Whether that child reunifies with their birth parent or is adopted by their foster parent, that relationship is extremely helpful to have. Yes, this is up to the birth parent, but I will always encourage a foster/adoptive parent to extend the olive branch when the time is appropriate. If the child reunifies, how great would it be for the foster parent to remain a resource for both the child and the birth parent and remain a part of their life? If the child is adopted, how nice would it be for the child to know who their birth parent is and have a positive association with them (if it is safe)? You can never have too many people to love a child!
Amanda Kennedy
I am a caseworker in the Substitute Care Unit. I have B.A.s in psychology and sociology and have worked with children and families since 2006. I first worked a year at a youth residential facility before joining Lake County Job and Family Services in 2007. My first ten years were spent in Intake, where I investigated concerns of child and elder abuse and neglect, assessed for safety, and ultimately helped families maintain a safe environment.
In 2018, I transitioned to the Substitute Care Unit, where I now work with not only people who are interested in foster care and adoption, but also relatives and kin of children in our care that need a soft place to land. Before I came to JFS, I did not know what I wanted to do beyond “being able to help others.” My time working directly with the families we serve as well as foster and adoptive parents has shown me that sometimes “helping others” is about meeting families where they are and helping them to find resources.
I enjoy being able to provide education and advocacy to the families I work with. Foster care is easily misunderstood, especially when it comes to the dynamics that are in play with children in the public foster care system. It is easy to see a child in need rather than an entire family in need. A big part of being able to work with foster parents is helping them round out the bigger picture. The homestudy process not only gives me the opportunity to learn about my foster/adoptive families and see how I can best support them, but to also educate them and help them be the best resource possible to our community.