Dawn Gavasci brings over three decades of leadership, supervision, and practical experience in child welfare across state and county levels to her training, leadership, and consulting. She is a subject matter expert in Permanency, focusing on permanency planning policy application, fiscal and funding issues, and strategies to enhance permanency performance outcomes. Dawn excels in building robust relationships with the workforce, County & DHHS colleagues, community leaders, and stakeholders, significantly contributing to collective efforts to improve outcomes. One notable example is her leadership in a court collaborative project aimed at addressing the Judicial system at various levels to reduce court continuances, thereby improving timeliness to permanence.
Dawn’s extensive child welfare experience covers all practice areas within the field, serving in various roles such as social worker (Assessments, Family In-Home, and Permanency), Supervisor, Program Coordinator (Families for Kids), Program Manager for Adoptions, Permanency, licensing, and LINKS (10 years), and NC DHHS Child Welfare Regional Specialist. She has substantial expertise in implementing continuous quality improvement processes across all program areas, including analyzing data trends, understanding the “stories” behind the data, and engaging the workforce in developing strategies to enhance practice, supervision, and outcomes.
Additionally, Dawn has deep experience collaborating with MCOs to find placements for children with substantial behavioral health needs. Additionally, she has been a team lead in Disaster Planning and activation of those plans with NC Emergency Management. Her dedication to driving systems change and serving the citizens in North Carolina is evident through her extensive network of relationships, practice, leadership expertise, and the achievement of collaborative community, organizational, and client outcomes. Dawn holds a Bachelor of Social Work from UNC Pembroke, has two children, and resides in Eastern North Carolina with her husband.
