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"The love and compassion this agency has for children is truly exceptional!."

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Angels Biographies

Cathy P. Richman
Founder, CEO, Chairman of the Board

Cathy Richman has donated her time as CEO and Chairman of the Board since she founded Angels in 1998. Cathy is involved in every component of Angels, from fundraising and administration, to training and child placement.

A mother of three and former foster parent, Cathy spent 5 years as a volunteer Court-Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) in San Diego County Juvenile Courts. During that time she witnessed firsthand the problems and failures of County-run foster care.

Drawing on her experiences as a child advocate and her research in child development, Cathy developed her own vision for foster care. She envisioned a select corps of foster parents whose motives for fostering arose out of love for children, and who would commit to nurturing foster babies for long periods of time. She dreamed of a day when all foster babies would be properly nurtured and given all the necessary tools to grow up to be healthy, productive members of society.

In 1998, that vision became a reality with the founding of Angels, a "non-treatment" Foster Family Network (an agency exclusively placing babies). Over the next year, Cathy and Angels would develop the basic screening and training requirements for Angels foster families and bring on a professional staff, including MSW-degree social workers, all of whom were equally committed to the Angels cause.

In 2001 Cathy was awarded the Channel 10 Leadership Award her work with Angels.

In September, 2005 Cathy was selected by Congressman Darrell Issa to be one of 180 Congressional Angels in Adoption for the year. Cathy was honored at a national ceremony in Washington, D.C. hosted by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (CCAI).

In December, 2005, San Diego Metropolitan Magazine named Cathy as one of 26 "Metro Movers To Watch in 2006."

The entire Richman family is committed to the Angels agency, and they regularly donate their time and money to its success.

John Landsverk
Ph.D. Researcher, Advisory Board Member

Dr. Landsverk received a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Minnesota in 1969, and completed a two-year NIH funded post-doctoral fellowship in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1981. He is currently a professor at the School of Social Work at San Diego State University, and serves as the Director of Research at the Center for Child Protection at Children's Hospital-San Diego, and as Director of an NIMH funded Center for Research on Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.

Dr. Landsverk pursues ongoing research in mental health services within the public systems of child welfare, juvenile probation, and education. He takes a particular interest in the impact of home visitation on the health and development of children at risk for maltreatment. He has served on and chaired two scientific review committees for NIMH. Currently, Dr. Landsverk is the principal investigator on two studies of home visitation, one using a professional model in the U.S. Marine Corps and the other using a Healthy Families America paraprofessional model in San Diego. He is the principal investigator of a projected 20 year longitudinal study of foster children funded by NCCAN and the principle investigator for an NIMH funded study of mental health care in child welfare, probation, substance abuse services, and the SED sector of education.

See our Board of Directors and Staff pages for more about Angels participants and personnel.

Contact Angels
Call 619-283-8100 or contact us on-line to learn how you can help Angels change the lives of unfortunate children in San Diego County.

Please note that Angels places babies only in San Diego County of California.We regret that many of the interested applicants who contact us live outside of this area, but we cannot accept any applications from outside of San Diego County.