Andy Berkhout
Andy Berkhout joined Prevent Child Abuse America as a Quality Improvement Data Analyst in August 2021. He believes that all children and families should have the support and resources they need to be successful and thrive.
Andy Berkhout joined Prevent Child Abuse America as a Quality Improvement Data Analyst in August 2021. He believes that all children and families should have the support and resources they need to be successful and thrive.
Lenny Rivota joined the National Office as a Training & TA Specialist in 2021. She has over 16 years of early childhood experience with over 10 years of work directly in Healthy Families America programs. She has worked in HFA programs as a Home Visitor, a Lead and a Program Supervisor. Her other early childhood roles include working in a pediatric behavioral health facility, leading an early childhood community collaboration and supervising a Parents as Teachers home visiting program. She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Dominican University and a master’s degree in child development from Erikson Institute. She is bilingual and speaks fluent English and Spanish. She is passionate about supporting and strengthening families and communities. Lenny lives in the Chicagoland area with her husband. She enjoys cooking, gardening, and cheering for Chicago sports teams.
Laura began her Healthy Families journey with a local program, first as a Family Resource Specialist and then as a Supervisor. After nearly 10 years, Laura moved to the Healthy Families Virginia state office, where she provided technical assistance, quality assurance, and training to Healthy Families Virginia’s multi-site system. Laura is a certified trainer for HFA Foundations for Family Support and Parent Survey for Community Outreach, as well as an HFA Peer Reviewer and former member of the HFA Training Advisory Committee. Laura’s areas of interest include reflective supervision, infant mental health, continuous quality improvement, and data-driven service delivery. Laura has a Master of Social Work from the University of Southern California and has worked with families and children for more than 18 years. She currently lives in Virginia with her husband, two children, and a very noisy dog, but will always consider the west coast to be “home”.
Diana Sanchez has fifteen years of home visitation experience working at a nonprofit in Northern California. In 2014 she became the program manager of the Healthy Families program at her organization and immediately stepped into an accreditation year. It was through the accreditation process that Diana experience first-hand the parallel process in the support from her then Implementation Specialist. Diana was able to see the fidelity to the model through the work by the staff and the impact on the families served. In the years that followed, Diana and her team were often referred to when new sites needed local support in the implementation process. With the desire to do and learn more, Diana joined the HFA Accreditation Panel in 2018 and completed the Peer Reviewer training. As the Healthy Families America Site Development Specialist, Diana looks forward to working with potential new sites, walking them through the affiliation process and supporting them as they join the HFA family.
Danita Roberts is a Training and TA Specialist with Healthy Families America. Prior to this she served as the Program Manager/ Supervisor for a Healthy Families Program in Providence, RI and was also an HFA Peer Reviewer and member of the HFA REaCH Committee. Danita graduated from Wheelock College with a degree in Human Development and a concentration in Child Life. Originally she thought that she wanted to work to promote development and attachment within a hospital setting, however, after taking a job in Early Intervention, she realized that seeing people in their homes was an opportunity to understand and support them more holistically. And when she found HFA a little later, realized that a program specifically designed to promote attachment and bonding through the fostering of relationships was what she had been looking for this whole time.
Christi Peeples discovered Healthy Families in Oregon in 1999, shortly after having her first child. She was originally hired part-time to focus on data sharing and database development across five partners. In 2005 she became a program manager, just in time for Oregon’s first round of Healthy Families America (HFA) accreditation. Christi became committed to the HFA accreditation process after seeing firsthand the difference it makes to truly embrace model fidelity—when comparing families served prior to accreditation with those served after Oregon’s state system reached accreditation, many family outcomes dramatically increased and child maltreatment rates were cut in half.
Kit Patterson worked with Healthy Families programs for 18 years prior to joining the national office in 2019. She began as a home visitor at a Healthy Families site in the Chicago suburbs in 2001 and held a variety of program positions over a ten-year period. Kit subsequently supported home visitors, supervisors, and doulas in the state of Illinois through training and technical assistance. She is a certified trainer in HFA Foundations for Family Support (FFS) and has served as a member of the HFA accreditation panel. Kit is fluent in Spanish and English, and has a particular interest in professional development, reflective practice, and continuous quality improvement processes.
Tomeaka joined the national office in 2019. Prior to this, she served for 15 years as Program Manager for an HFA site in Maryland working collaboratively to expand the program from a team of six serving specific areas within the community to a multi-disciplinary team of 21 staff providing county-wide support. Tomeaka has experience integrating mental health and public health nursing services to enhance the service model and creating non-traditional partnerships to engage mothers that are incarcerated. She has served as a HFA Peer Reviewer and a member of the HFA National Advisory Council. In addition to her work with HFA, she has experience serving families as a mental health clinician, domestic violence shelter director, child protective services assistant and case manager for families experiencing homelessness.