Constance Flower, MSW, LCSW  (Full Biography)

Connie Flower has been involved in public child welfare services for twenty-four years.  While at the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, Ms. Flower served as a child protection investigator, follow-up caseworker, supervisor of a permanency team and manager of field services. She successfully led the Department’s Northern Region to achievement of accreditation through the Council on Accreditation of Services to Children and Families.  Her offices served as a model for Illinois’ successful accreditation efforts.  In this role, she led the development and implementation of a regional and field office service-friendly quality improvement process.

Ms. Flower led DCFS’ nationally-recognized “Best Practices” program and policy development initiative which was a state of the art, evidence based practice model that would serve as the guiding principals for the design and development of the State Automated Child Welfare Information System. In this role, she coordinated the work of the “expert” panel, private agencies, groups of child welfare professionals and served as a key policy and practice advisor to the Director of DCFS.

After her time at DCFS, Ms. Flower served as Senior Child Welfare Specialist for Fostering Results, a national education and outreach campaign to build support for outcomes for children and families served by the nation’s child welfare system.  This effort was operated by the Children and Family Research Center through funding by the Pew Charitable Trusts to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  In this capacity, Ms. Flower served as the principal liaison to ten state partners and national organizations composing the initiative. She worked with stakeholders to improve their understanding of the impact that results-oriented management and evidence-based practice in child welfare have on federal financing and court reform

Ms. Flower has continued her involvement with the council on accreditation as a peer reviewer and as a member of COA’s current standards review panel charged with updating COA standards.  She has taught child welfare policy courses as an adjunct instructor in the social work program at Aurora University and is currently consulting with private and public agencies in the area of casework supervision and practice development

Ms. Flower holds a Bachelors Degree from Benedictine University and a Masters of Social Work degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Print - Friendly Version