Supervisor Core - Fall/Winter 2025 Cohort

Build your leadership skills and gain confidence in your ability to support your team at the micro, mezzo and macro levels throughout this comprehensive program tailored specifically for child welfare supervisors. Throughout the 11 days of training, we will help you gain more knowledge about yourself, your leadership style and your practice as a whole.

Supervisor Core will engage you through the use of videos, scenarios, small and large group activities, journaling and action plans, providing a rich environment for collaboration, discussion and individual reflection. Each day will layer and integrate knowledge to show the parallels to your agency practice and to cross-thread the ideas in the classroom.

This program consists of multiple topics spread across 11 days that are grouped into five modules.

Cohort Course Schedule

This will be a fully virtual cohort. Modules 1-5 will be held through Zoom. All trainings are full-day trainings from 9:00am to 4:00pm except for Ongoing Development as a Leader, which will be from 9am-12:15pm.

MODULE 1

Day 1 & 2: Leading in Child Welfare – The Role of the Supervisor Oct. 1-2, 2025

MODULE 2

Day 3 & 4: Creating an Organizational Learning Environment Nov. 5-6, 2025

MODULE 3

Day 5: Data-Informed Supervision Dec. 3, 2025
Day 6: Supervising for Accountability Dec. 4, 2025

MODULE 4

Day 7 & 8: Case Consultation & Critical Thinking: Teaming for Success Jan. 7-8, 2026
Safety Organized Practice for Supervisors Jan. 14, 2026

MODULE 5

Day 9: Supporting Individual and Team Development Feb. 11, 2026
Day 10: Ongoing Development as a Leader Feb. 12, 2026

COURSE MAKE-UP REQUESTS

In order to be enrolled in select courses within this cohort for make-up, please email your request to Academy@ucdavis.edu

CEUs

6.6

Section Number

252SSA219

Instruction Method

Online class

Enroll Now

Section Schedule

Tues., Wed., Thur., Oct 1st, 2025 to Feb 12th, 2026, 9:00am to 4:00pm

Fees

Instructors

Amanda Gollon

Amanda Gollon is a Human Services professional with 16 years of experience in county and state departments. Presently, she is a manager with the California Department of Social Services overseeing union negotiations between the State of California and Child Care Providers United. Prior to that role, Gollon worked with the Department of Transportation as a training consultant where she developed unique curriculum to support over 22,000 employees. She also worked at Sacramento County Department of Human Assistance and was responsible for Training and Staff Development. Gollon is a certified facilitator for True Colors International and is working toward a Master of Science in Learning Experience Design and Educational Technologies.

Dorothy Byron-Arrington

Dorothy Byron-Arrington has 20 years of experience in child welfare services. She has worked with the Indian Child Welfare Unit, Resource Family Approval, and as a Team Decision Making Facilitator. Byron-Arrington assisted with countywide implementation of Child and Family Teaming in her county, and she helped develop training for the Katie A. Settlement. She is currently an administrator for a CWS county and a trainer for Quality Caseworker Visits.

Peggi Cooney

Peggi Cooney, M.S.W., is a Safety Organized Practice coach and trainer for Human Services at UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education. She has more than 15 years of experience in social services with expertise in child welfare, adult services and supervision in Colusa County. In that same county, Cooney developed the Independent Living Program and was part of the team that developed and implemented the Multiple Discipline Interview Team. During her tenure in Colusa County, she was also an adjunct faculty member, where she taught psychology at Woodland Community College.

Kate Bedwell

Kate Bedwell is a social worker, trainer, and a certified Gallup Strengths Coach with more than 20 years of practice and leadership success. Her professional career has spanned the realms of public child welfare, juvenile justice, family self-sufficiency and workforce development. As a supervising practice coach within public child welfare for more than seven years, she developed mastery of coaching, training, and simulation facilitation to support implementation of best practices across all levels of the workforce in public child welfare. She specializes in facilitating safe, challenging, dynamic and interactive learning processes which vitalize, inspire, and motivate teams and individuals. Deeply inspired by her work training and coaching within child welfare, Bedwell strongly believes training and coaching of the child welfare workforce is fundamental to the implementation of evidenced based child welfare practice.

Baljit Hundal

Baljit Hundal, M.S.W., has a 30-year career in Health and Human Services, working in both the private and public sectors across California and New York City. She has held key leadership roles in county governance, including child welfare and mental health director positions. Hundal has led major initiatives such as extended foster care, Katie A., Continuum of Care and CalAIM implementation. She also has experience in mass care, shelter, and recovery efforts after wildfires. Currently, she consults with state and county partners and trains child welfare professionals through California’s regional training academies.

Betsy Watson

Betsy Watson has worked in the field of child welfare since 2001. She began her career as a social worker and then transitioned to Emergency Response social work at the County of Ventura, where she currently serves as an after-hours supervisor. She also serves as a backup facilitator for the county’s CFTM program. Watson has worked as a child welfare trainer since 2019 with subject matter expertise in CFTM, structured decision making, trauma-informed practice, Common Core, fairness and equity, cultural humility in child welfare interviews, critical thinking and assessment, and other training topics.

Laura Shotzbarger

Laura Shotzbarger has recently retired as a regional manager from the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. With over 28 years of experience working in child welfare, she is passionate about supporting those staff working directly with children and families. As a regional manager, she advocated for advanced training in the areas of domestic violence as well as maternal mental health and its impact on the family. She embraces multidisciplinary teaming and quality supervision to make the best decisions possible for families. Shotzbarger is a champion for coaching and mentorship at all levels of the organization to foster an environment of transparency, respect and integrity.

Dionne Puckett

Dionne Puckett, M.S.W., is an instructor with Human Services at UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education. With nearly two decades of human services experience, Puckett has served in a variety of positions of community outreach, leadership, direct practice, and education. As a social worker with San Diego County, she honed in on her ability to provide leadership, engagement, and education to a multitude of families and staff. Puckett combines her professional experience with theory, adult learning model and best practice to illustrate course material in every training she facilitates

Catherine Chase

Catherine Chase has more than 30 years of experience working with children and families. She retired as director of child welfare in Napa County and has been training and coaching child welfare professionals since 2016 in topics including Safety Organized Practice, Core for Social Workers, Concurrent Planning Documentation, CANS Assessment, Structured Decision Making and Child and Family Teaming, as well as leadership training for supervisors and managers. Previously, Chase served in a management role for San Diego Child Welfare Services as a policy analyst, where she was instrumental in the development of the Continuous Quality Improvement Program for San Diego County.

Nicole Bradford

Nicole Bradford, M.S.W., has spent over a decade working with vulnerable children and families as a child welfare social worker and supervisor in one of the few frontier counties in California. She has expertise in child abuse prevention and differential response, referral intake and emergency response investigations, and Resource Family Approval. Bradford has significant experience working in child abuse investigations, forensic interviewing of abuse victims and critical incidents related to child death investigations. She extends this trauma-informed lens administratively in her work to recruit, retain and build a competent child welfare workforce.

Rebekah Rogers

Rebekah Rogers, M.A., served as a social worker for Tuolumne County’s Adult, Child and Family Services for 12 years, including five years as the supervisor of the Emergency Response unit. She has also served as the Foster and Kinship Care Education program specialist for several counties, where she wrote curriculum and delivered training workshops for Resource Family Approval caregivers. Rogers has been teaching for UC Davis Human Services Northern Academy since 2015.