HEALING SPIRITS. NURTURING CHILDREN. SERVING COMMUNITIES. SINCE 1877.
ABOUT US
Darlene Hewett, MSW, LSW - President & CEO
Darlene Hewett began her career at the Village in 1976 as a social worker. Since that time, she has served in positions with progressive leadership responsibilities. She was appointed the Community-Based Program Director in 1980 and served in that capacity for seven years. She assumed the overall responsibility for development and implementation of community-based programs including foster care and supervised independent living. Supervising a social work staff, she recruited and trained foster parents, and developed and implemented program policies and procedures.
In 1987 she became the assistant director for Community-Based Services and continued her overall responsibility for fulfillment of community-based programs. She was next promoted to assistant director for Residential and Community-Based Programs in 1996. For four years she assumed the overall responsibility for Residential Treatment and Community-Based Programs, including providing program leadership for the first JCAHO survey.
In 2000, she became the vice president for programs and was responsible for the overall administration and supervision of all programs and performance improvement procedures within this multi-faceted social services agency. She ensured that programs met JCAHO accreditation requirements for Residential Treatment, Behavioral Health Care, Foster Care (including medical and treatment foster care services); Kinship Care, Services to Children in their Own Homes (SCOH) and Community-Based Prevention.
In the spring of 2007, she was selected to become CEO and president, following a national search by the Board of Directors for a successor to long-time director Loren Preheim, who was intending to retire. The sudden death of Mr. Preheim after more than three decades of compassionate leadership brought Darlene into her new role sooner than anticipated.
Darlene received her undergraduate degree in home economics from Kansas State University and her MA in social work from the Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA.
Click a link below to learn more:
