Carole Shauffer

Senior Director, Quality Parenting Initiative

Carole Shauffer became Youth Law Center’s Senior Director, Strategic Initiatives in 2012 after serving as Executive Director since 1994, and before that, as a Staff Attorney since 1981. Carole’s work has focused on improving outcomes for foster youth through developing better services for infants and young children in the child welfare system, working with faith communities to provide support and services for at-risk youth, and reducing the use of shelter care for foster youth, particularly for infants and toddlers. Carole co-created the Quality Parenting Initiative (QPI) project, which is focused on developing positive culture change within the child welfare system. She has also worked to improve access to community and family for youth in the juvenile justice system through introducing child welfare practices to probation departments in California. With Georgetown Professor Rachel Barr, Carole has developed a hands-on parenting project now being instituted in five facilities in California and one in Ohio. Often referred to as the Baby Elmo Project, it provides at risk youth with parenting tools to communicate a build relationships with their children, thus positively affecting the development of the baby and the father. Before joining the Youth Law Center, Carole worked at the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana.

Education:

J.D., Northeastern University School of Law, 1978
M.Ed., Northeastern University, 1974 B.A., Smith College, 1971
Honors: Zero to Three Harris Mid-Career Fellow, 2003 to 2005