Skip to main content
Ashley Deckard

Ashley Deckard

Director of the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF), overseeing child welfare, juvenile justice, and children's behavioral health.

Aug 20, 2026

2:43
So I've
2:48
always been a social worker at heart.
2:50
I've always had a tender heart for helping people.
2:52
In fact, at first I thought I wanted to be a nurse and then I started to do the math and sciences in college and quickly realized that nursing was not for me.
3:01
So I got my undergrad in sociology because I had such an interest in learning about people and the way people work and why we do the things that we do.
3:09
And very quickly came to realize that there was this field called social work that really was intended to help people be able to thrive, essentially, no matter what type of social work you do.
3:22
Obviously, there are various types of social work.

13 MINS LATER

16:34
So can you tell us a little bit more about like what the implementation, what are the next steps? Like what are you doing now? Now that the work has started and you've, like you said, maybe it was hard to sort of like own it, like you said, but you had kind of where like you made that decision that probably the right decision to make, right? But like, so now what do you do moving

We value your privacy

We use cookies to understand how you use our platform and to improve your experience. Click “Accept All” to consent, or “Decline non-essential” to opt out of non-essential cookies. Read our Privacy Policy.