Christine Norbut Beyer

Christine Norbut Beyer has decades of public/private experience and a visionary’s perspective to child welfare transformation. As Commissioner, she is redefining the agency as a prevention-focused, child and family serving department. Under her leadership, the Department of Children and Families has reduced out of home removals, increased kinship placement and made historic investments in children’s mental health. With a progressive lens, she pioneered including constituent voice and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and healing-centered practice to inform departmental policies and initiated a race equity steering committee to study and correct disparities in reporting, investigating and removing children of color from their families. Prior to her appointment, Ms. Beyer served as Senior Director and Strategic Consultant at Casey Family Programs, a national child welfare foundation, focused on improving outcomes for children and families. In her capacity as a national child welfare consultant, she supported the efforts of public child welfare agencies, the judiciary and governors in creating better outcomes for at-risk children and families and had the opportunity to delve deeply into the areas of brain science, ACEs, and trauma-informed care and the intersection with child welfare. These are policy areas she continues to pursue at the Department of Children and Families.