Sarah Morris-Compton will join Youth Advocate Programs (YAP®), Inc.’s 50th Anniversary YAP® Making Change Happen Summit as a panel moderator. She will lead a discussion on “Innovations in Child and Family Wellbeing: Practices and Policies.
YAP® is a national nonprofit founded in 1975 that delivers evidence-based individual and family services in communities as an alternative to placing young people in trouble, in crisis, or otherwise facing complex challenges in residential care or corrections facilities. The nonprofit’s neighborhood-based Advocates are trained to help program participants see and nurture their strengths while connecting them and their parents, guardians and other loved ones with individualized educational, economic and emotional needs tools to firm their family foundation.
Morris-Compton is a senior associate with The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Family Well-being Strategy Group. With a background in human services and public health with an emphasis on advancing outcomes for children, youth and families, she specializes in forming large multi-sector reform coalitions, executive coaching, leading organizational development and implementation, developing performance management capacity, creating practice models and using qualitative evaluation in child welfare practice improvement.
Morris-Compton has led and supported system transformation efforts across the country, including in the Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, Maryland, Oklahoma, Michigan, Rhode Island, Delaware, Virginia and Indiana.
Before joining Casey, Morris-Compton consulted with the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene on implementation and sustainability of the health policy and population health initiatives. She is a former director of health policy and planning for the City of Baltimore.
Morris-Compton began her career as a social worker in a range of health, community mental health and human services settings in the United States and abroad, including Turkmenistan and Kenya as part of the Peace Corps. She holds a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Maryland Baltimore County and a bachelor’s degree in social work from Ball State.
Learn more about YAP® and the national nonprofit’s 50th anniversary at YAPInc.org.