Tuscarawas County, Ohio (WJER) - The director of Tuscarawas County’s child advocacy center is taking on a new role after more than 6 years with the agency.
Vanessa Stergios announced her resignation this week from the Noah’s Hope Child Advocacy Center as she prepares for her new job overseeing child advocacy centers statewide.
Stergios says she’s proud of what she has helped accomplish since taking over the part-time role as director, which has since grown into a full-time position.
“We’ve really been able to be a great resource for children and families that have the difficult experience of having child abuse occur in their family. I think we’ve been able to be a great resource. I think we’ve been able to connect children to services that heal and help them put abuse behind them,” she says.
Stergios came on as director in 2012, and she says since that time the agency has built community relationships and brought significant change to the way Tuscarawas County handles child abuse cases.
“We’ve really, as an organization, become strong. We have a larger, diverse board. We have a lot of great community partners that we’ve worked closely with from the ADAMHS board to the board of DD to the United Way,” she says.
Over the years, Stergios has been able to move the agency forward, implementing a telemedicine program with Akron Children’s Hospital, developing a human trafficking education program and most recently partnering with the Noah’s Hope Organization.
She will officially step down in December to take a job with the Ohio CAC Network to help establish new agencies and build them up like she has in Tuscarawas County.
“Across the state, there are 14 developing child advocacy centers that are in various stages of opening their doors, starting to serve clients, really just starting to pull community members together and talk about how to develop the CAC and how to best respond to these complex child abuse cases,” she says.
Applicants for the position can submit their resume to CAC Board President Ryan Styer.
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