Virginia Olivas, MSW

Virginia Olivas, MSW, is field faculty and the program coordinator of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services Stipend Program; teaches child welfare field courses for specialization year Title IV-E students; and is the liaison for students, field instructors, and DCFS intern coordinators. She has 25 years of experience in public child welfare, specializing in adoptions, and for 12 years she supervised MSW students from various local universities. Olivas is also a permanency-planning mediator and mediates postadoption contact agreements, which serve to honor connections for adoptees with their birth families after an adoption finalizes. She is passionate about child welfare as a professional and as an adoptive parent.