Staff
Toni Spoliansky
FTC Grant Director
352-244-1574
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Toni Spoliansky has worked in the Utilization Management department with the Partnership for Strong Families since its inception in 2007. Ms. Spoliansky has 7 years of child welfare experience, serving in both front line and managerial roles – roles that included extensive case management experience, program oversight, policy and procedural development and various levels of quality assurance and data analysis. She is certified as a Child Protection Professional as well as a Family Team Conference Mentor. Her experience, coupled with her passion to empower families is what drove her to this position as FTC Grant Director, where she is able to focus on the FTC model.
Pebbles Edelman, L.M.H.C.
Senior VP of Clinical and Community Services
352-244-1514
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Pebbles Edelman has more than 15 years of experience in child welfare and mental health. In her current position she oversees utilization management, prevention and diversion services, provider and community relations and resource development.
Ms. Edelman has worked as a child and family therapist, clinical program director and in quality assurance and operations. While in these positions she developed, oversaw and coordinated programs and processes for critical incidents, child exit interviews, death reviews, quality reviews and clinical supervision with the purpose of promoting quality care to children and families in the dependency system while continuously finding ways to evaluate and improve care. As the Quality Operations Manager she oversaw and coordinated quality staffing, administrative direction and support for contracted agencies. She provided direction to the case management staff to help assure implementation of all applicable policies, procedures and statutes relative to services for dependent children and their families. Pebbles graduated from the University of Florida in 1994 with a masters and specialists degree in Counselor Education.
FTC Facilitators
The Family Team Conference Facilitator (FTC Facilitator) is a neutral person who will guide the FTC process. They are individuals highly skilled in working with families and are independent of the Child Protective Investigators and Family Care Counselors.
The FTC Facilitator will be informed of the family’s situation and what they hope to achieve from the FTC by the FTC coordinator. During the FTC, the FTC Facilitator will work with the family, using the goals they have identified for themselves, to assist the family in the development of their family’s plan. They will do this in a manner that focuses on the family’s strengths and maintains their confidentiality. The FTC Facilitator also ensures that the family agrees to the items on the plan and that those items promote safety in the family’s home. Finally, the FTC Facilitator is an expert at local services available in the family’s area and will work with the family to match which services will best meet the needs identified by the family on their plan. The FTC Facilitator will ensure any identified services are set up in an expedited manner, so that the family can begin working on the items on their plan as soon as possible.
FTC Coordinator
The Family Team Conference Coordinator (FTC Coordinator) will work with the family to plan the Family Team Conference (FTC), based on the individual needs of the family. They will inform the family of the FTC process, and how it can benefit the family. The FTC Coordinator will ask the family which supports in their life they would want to invite to the FTC and how those individuals might contribute to the process.
The FTC Coordinator will then work with the family, their identified supports and any professionals attending the meeting, to coordinate the time, date and location of the FTC. The FTC Coordinator will ensure that the FTC is scheduled at a time and place that is suitable to the family’s needs. The FTC Coordinator will also discuss the need for childcare for the family during the FTC and arrange such childcare, if needed.
Robin Perry, PhD
Principal Investigator
Dr. Perry has eight years of practice experience in child welfare and domestic violence settings, including serving as a child protective investigator and service worker. He is currently associate professor of social work at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical (A&M) University and Director for the Institute for Child and Family Services Research in Tallahassee, Florida. He has worked as a researcher in the child welfare field for 15 years and has published and presented more than 75 papers on child welfare topics.
He is the lead author of the recently published Florida Fact Book on Child Welfare, as well as Improving the Lives of Children & Families: Redefining Performance Measurement for Florida’s Child Welfare System, and a chapter in The Comprehensive Handbook of Social Work and Social Welfare called “Child Welfare: Historical Trends, Professionalization and Workforce Issues.” Over the past seven years Dr. Perry has worked collaboratively with the Florida Department of Children and Families, the Florida Coalition for Children and a number of Community-Based Care agencies throughout Florida on research and evaluation activities. In 2008, he was appointed to the National Advisory Committee of Family Resource Information, Education and Network Development Services (FRIENDS). He obtained his doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley in 1999.
Jane Yoo, PhD
Principal Investigator
Jane Yoo is Founder and President of Clarus Research—a consulting company that provides evaluation and research services to non-profit, for-profit and government agencies that serve children, youth and families. Prior to launching Clarus Research, Dr. Yoo was Founder and Executive Director of Results Research (R2), which is a non-profit 501(c)3 research organization that works toward the advancement of applied behavioral research on practice with children and families.
Dr. Yoo has been an evaluation consultant for more than a decade; she has years of experience in the human services as both a social work practitioner and researcher. Dr. Yoo has consulted on numerous research projects, including an evaluation of the Youth and Family Accountability Model for the Los Angeles County Probation Department and a statewide study of the educational placement of children residing in licensed children’s institutions in California.
Dr. Yoo has consulted on the evaluation of First 5 LA’s Partnership for Families initiative, which is a countywide initiative for child maltreatment prevention. She was the principal investigator for a program evaluation of a mental health unit at Central Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles. Recently, she was the principal evaluator for Casey Family Program’s Neighborhood Based Prevention Initiative in Los Angeles.
Dr. Yoo has extensive knowledge of human service delivery systems, as well as local programs for juvenile delinquency and crime prevention, child welfare, children and youth education, childcare and children and youth mental health services.
