Meet our Team

With over 100 years of combined experience in child welfare, we couldn’t be more excited about the future.

  • Jennifer Shinpoch began her journey in child welfare as a foster mom. In each child’s case there was little to no mention of the abused children, their emotional well- being, and their constitutional rights. She quickly realized the need for child-centered policies and laws.

    As a child, Jennifer experienced significant medical trauma. She understands the far reaching effects of trauma from a personal standpoint and as a foster mom caring for the needs of children from hard places. She believes with training we can identify the needs of children who have experienced trauma in order for healing to occur.

    In 2018, she began working with Georgia State Legislators to advance the abused child’s rights. Since that time, Georgia has passed three laws for children in foster care that originated from the team she worked with to create them. Jennifer believes in great partnerships with other child welfare organizations for great outcomes for children. She represented The Center for the Rights of Abused Children as the Georgia liaison, and she currently serves on the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services State Advisory Board.

    Jennifer has been married to her husband Joel for 18 years and they have five children together. They have fostered and adopted twice. Together they serve the local church near Athens, Georgia in ministry. She feels most at home being described as “just a mom”.

  • Tom Rawlings is a child protection consultant and attorney at Taylor English Duma in Atlanta. As a member of the firm’s Litigation and Dispute Resolution Department, Tom Rawlings concentrates his practice on advising and defending youth-serving organizations. He has spent more than 20 years representing and serving institutional clients with a focus on vulnerable populations, including children and families, juveniles, and individuals living with poverty, food insecurity, and medical disabilities.

    Prior to joining Taylor English, he served as the Director of the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services. He was previously the Georgia Director of the Office of the Child Advocate. Tom was the first full-time Juvenile court Judge in the Middle Georgia Judicial Circuit and oversaw juvenile justice cases in five counties.

    In addition to his work in the USA, Tom Rawlings has also served as the Guatemala Country Director for International Justice Mission, where he built and led a team of Guatemalan professionals who worked with government prosecutors and courts to protect and treat child sexual abuse victims, prosecute offenders, and train child abuse professionals. He has trained child welfare, justice, and human rights professionals across the USA as well as in Armenia, Romania, and Thailand.

    Tom Rawlings earned a Masters degree in International Human Rights Law from Oxford University (UK), and is certified by the National Association of Counsel for Children as a Child Welfare Law Specialist.

  • Paul Blough is a veteran of the IT service provider industry with a career spanning nearly 4 decades. A serial entrepreneur, he is currently the CEO and Founder of Blough Tech, a nationally recognized IT service company focused on helping small businesses solve their problems through technology. For Paul, Blough Tech is both an opportunity to help his clients and an enabler for his other ministry passions. He is a published author and expert on Rural Area Technology with articles on Forbes.com. He is a past president and current member of the Cairo Rotary chapter and has served as chairman of the Cairo-Grady Chamber of Commerce. Paul and his wife Kim are 30+ year veteran foster parents and have had over 140+ children in their home. Currently they have 2 foster children and 5 children adopted out of foster care in their home. They also have 3 adult birth children and 2 adult adopted children. They are actively involved in trying to break the cycle of trauma that leads many foster children to repeat the mistakes of their birth parents. Both Paul and Kim served on the board of AFPAG, the Georgia foster parent association, and Paul is a former president of AFPAG.

  • Sarah Meyer is wife to Matt and mother to three daughters and one son. She earned her bachelor’s in International Business, Finance and Economics from the University of Georgia and her MBA from Georgia Southern University. Sarah has held most of her career in the private sector, working for more than 15 years as a change leader in the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) Industry. She began her career in finance and transitioned to leading Sales Account Planning and business implementations of process and technology. She has worked closely with Retailers to lead collaborative planning efforts and drive insights to change. She holds a certificate in Change Management and still works with companies today to optimize profit through effective planning.

    Sarah’s family opened their home for foster placement in 2014 and she has been advocating for children since. She serves as the Director of Strategic Development at Hope 1312 Collective in Southeast Georgia. She is a Trust Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) Practitioner and whole-heartedly believes that the story of child welfare in our state can be rewritten with the help of the Church.

  • Dr. Michelle Audrey Butler has been an advocate for children for over 20 years. She began her journey with the child welfare system as a relative foster parent. After fostering she became a CASA volunteer for a couple of years while obtaining her bachelor's degree from the University of West Georgia. Shortly after she became a case manager with the family preservation unit for Douglas County.

    Dr. Butler then obtained her Master’s degree in family counseling from Liberty University and began providing therapy services for the community and the Division of Family and Children Services. While working in a clinical setting, she obtained her Doctorate in May of 2022 with a concentration in Family Counseling with an emphasis on Traumatology. She is excited about beginning her own private practice in order to continue to serve children in difficult circumstances.

  • MaryBeth Forwood, JD, CWLS, is currently an Attorney/Guardian Ad Litem for children involved in the child welfare system through Floyd County Juvenile Court in Rome, Georgia. Ms. Forwood’s passion for protecting the vulnerable is evident. She has an established reputation as a child advocate and violence-against-women advocate serving sixteen years as a Prosecutor in both adult and juvenile courts – most especially for Special Victims cases involving Child/Adult Sexual Assault, Child Physical Abuse and Domestic Violence. She began her career as a Child Protective Services Social Worker and has continued to focus on child welfare and family law matters, especially adoptions, in each of her legal positions throughout her 35 years of practice. Having tried more than 60 major felony level jury trials as solo counsel, argued more than 50 oral arguments at both the State Supreme Court and Federal Court of Appeals levels, her well- rounded expertise, true sense of justice and comfort in the courtroom, is a benefit to every child she represents.

    MaryBeth earned her bachelors of Social Work, cum laude, from the University of Wyoming. She received a Juris Doctor from the University of Wyoming College of Law. As of 2021, she is a certified Child Welfare Law Specialist (CWLS) through the National Association of Counsel for Children.

    Born and raised primarily in New Mexico, MaryBeth spent many years “out west” but truly enjoys and appreciates the climate, intrinsic warmth and hospitality of the southeast. She is an avid runner, having completed six marathons (including Boston), more than 30 half marathons, and more 10k, 5k (and other various distance) races than she cares to tabulate. She is married to Jon Forwood, a retired career prosecutor most recently with the Western Circuit District Attorney’s Office in Athens, Georgia. Between them they have five grown children and four grandchildren. She also has a passion for dogs and cherishes her recently acquired English lab puppy “Macallan” and her senior chocolate lab “Maddy” and their assistance as her running buddies.

  • Sherriann H. Hicks currently focuses her legal career on adoption and surrogacy with The Hicks Law Group. Sherriann was admitted to practice law in 1995 and she has been an Adoption Fellow in the Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys since 2006. She currently serves as the Deputy Adoption Director for the Academy. Sherriann is a Past President of the Gwinnett County Bar Association and is a Past President and founding

    Fellow of the Georgia Council of Adoption Lawyers.

    Sherriann specializes in adoptions, and she has handled hundreds of adoptions over her nearly 25 years as a member of the State Bar of Georgia. She represents adoptive parents, relatives, stepparents, and foster parents seeking to expand their family through adoption. She also works with expectant birth parents looking to place their children for adoption as well as individuals involved in paternity and legitimation and guardianship actions. She also works with gestational carriers and intended parents who are building their families through assisted reproduction. Sherriann was involved in drafting and advocating for the passage of adoption legislation which went into effect September 1, 2018, which completely revised for the better Georgia’s Adoption Code.

    Sherriann litigates contested adoptions throughout the State of Georgia. Sherriann also serves as Guardian ad litem for the Superior Court Judges in Gwinnett County regularly. Sherriann and her husband Jeff formed the Hicks Law Group, and their office is in Gwinnett County. Sherriann and Jeff are both alumni of Greater Atlanta Christian School in Norcross, Georgia and have three children. Her daughter is in Law School, two sons in college. Sherriann also serves on the Board of Trustees for Greater Atlanta Christian School where she has also served as a Mock Trial

    Coach. In her free time Sherriann enjoys spending time with her family, playing tennis, and traveling.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

OUR VISION…

is to realign federal and state child welfare laws to ensure the needs of children and youth are put first.

Our mission is to unite parents, foster parents, and caregivers to advocate for the rights and best interests of children and youth in foster care through child welfare policy reform, representation, and education.

Our values:

  • Justice: The rights and best interests of children and youth come first.

  • Trauma informed: We work to minimize trauma for children and youth who have experienced maltreatment.

  • Advocacy: Listen to children and youth and give them a voice.  

  • Permanency: We work to reduce time in care and to speed safe and stable permanency for children and youth in care.


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