Amy L. Rossi

Amy Rossi is in her 15th year as executive director of Arkansas Advocates for Children & Families, only the third in the organization’s 26-year history. And she was on the AACF staff for eight years before that.

Before joining AACF, Rossi was on the front lines as a therapist who ran group homes for disturbed teenagers. But she “grew weary of the never-ending line at the door of children waiting to fill the seat of the child who just left our care.”

She uses an analogy to explain her work at AACF:

“There is an old story about children floating in a river and all the townspeople are frantically pulling them out of the water. Someone finally has the presence of mind to run upstream to find out how the kids are getting into the water in the first place.

“I’ve always thought my work in child advocacy was like that story – I needed to find way to prevent children from needing the services in the first place.”

AACF now has a staff of 16, but it hasn’t always been so robust. Twice Rossi has had to build the staff back from just two people, a chore she called her biggest challenge. Her greatest accomplishments have been AACF’s role in having the state’s juvenile court system declared unconstitutional in 1987, setting the stage for a uniform system of justice for children; bringing the federal school breakfast program to all eligible children in the state; and pressing for the ARKids First program of health insurance for children of the working poor.

“After 22 years here, I think we’re in a different place in the state with our children than we used to be. We’re still not where we need to be, but we’ve made strides,” Rossi said.

And she has no plans to move on.

“I don’t know what else to go and do,” Rossi said. “There are some days I think I’m never coming back. But the variety of this work is stimulating.”