Missouri Department of Social Services employee Gena Schmidt has been selected as the April State Employee of the Month for her work with children and especially for setting up a special children's program at Christmas.
Schmidt, who lives in High Ridge, works at the Children's Division in Hillsboro in Jefferson County and has been with the department for more than 21 years.
Jefferson County has more than 700 children in alternative care. For more than a decade, each October, Schmidt begins distributing wish lists to every resource home and case manager. She works through Christmas, coordinating with churches, individuals and other charitable organizations throughout the community that wish to sponsor alternative care children for Christmas. This year, she has received and coordinated gifts for more than 300 children so far. She will accept lists until Christmas because children will continue to come into protective custody. Because all donations are not equal, she has individuals who donate toys and other items that she supplements so all of the children in each home get a similar number of gifts for Christmas. For many of these alternative care children, these will be the only gifts they will receive on Christmas morning.
In her nomination letter, Schmidt's supervisor, Shellie Knuckles, told a story where Schmidt got a call from a young woman who wanted to sponsor a teenage girl for Christmas.
"She told Gena that she had grown up in foster care and she remembered how much it meant to her that Children's Division always made sure she had gifts on Christmas," Knuckles said. "The girl was now working as a dental technician and she wanted to 'give back' to another child in foster care. When Gena got her name, the young woman on the phone was a girl that had been in her caseload years earlier. Gena beamed as she told this story because she was so proud of this woman's resiliency and determination to overcome all obstacles to achieve her goals."
While offices across the state are understaffed and workers struggle to meet expectations, Gena continually exceeds the demands of her job, Knuckles said.
"She takes the initiative to solve a problem when she sees one rather than complain about it," Knuckles said in her letter. "She is a wealth of information and is always willing to help newer workers learn. Rather than do the work for them, she patiently teaches them and then shows them how to find information they need in the future. While so many workers burn out in the field of child welfare, Gena has dedicated most of her adult life to this work. She has never lost her compassion or the belief that people are capable of change with the right supports, and every day she works to provide all of the support that she can to make the lives of each person she encounters a little brighter."