Stephanie Holmes is a program specialist with the Texas Institute for Child & Family Wellbeing. She has over 16 years of experience in child welfare, with a primary focus on adoption, foster care, child placement, and legislative analysis & implementation in the public child welfare system. She has a passion for professional training and development to support the child welfare community in striving for concrete, positive outcomes for children and families.
Stephanie spent over a decade serving children and families at the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services where she was ultimately responsible for programmatic development of statewide policy and practice. She spent the early years of her career in direct practice with children and families and later moved toward training and supporting staff, families, and professional child welfare stakeholders throughout Texas. Stephanie brings commitment and passion to improving practices for child and family wellbeing through policy and practice development, training, and community engagement.
Stephanie obtained her Master of Science in Social Work from The University of Texas at Austin in 2009 and earned a Bachelor of Science in Family Studies from Texas Tech University in 2001. While in graduate school at UT, she was part of the Child Welfare Education Collaboration. Prior to her work in the public child welfare system, Stephanie worked for a private child placing agency as well as a non-profit adoption support organization.
Stephanie values the inclusion of children and families to build success into the very systems serving them. She is also interested in keeping legislators and public policy leaders informed of best practices in child-welfare so that laws and policies are proposed from an informed lens.
Professional Interests
Direct research with children and families to transform and create meaningful, systemic policy and practice in child welfare.