“What best characterizes Brittney is her fierce commitment to advocacy, equity, and justice.”

Brittney Barros is an innovative leader in child welfare as well as the runaway and homeless youth community. Building on her personal expertise in the foster care system, Brittney beat the odds to earn her bachelor’s degree in social work from Eastern Michigan University and went on to earn her MSW as a distinguished Child Welfare Scholar at the University of Michigan. Determined to make change, she is currently pursuing her second master’s degree in public policy at U-M.

Brittney has already made an impact on child welfare at both individual and systems levels. As an undergraduate, Brittney interned with the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute and wrote a published policy brief on sibling separation in foster care. She also served as a congressional intern for Senator Gary C. Peters and helped to write the Protecting Sibling Relationships in Foster Care Act. Most recently, Brittney is employed as a consultant for the Michigan Supreme Court, and she founded the Youth Advocacy Project, serving young people in foster care to achieve quality court improvement in child welfare proceedings. She additionally serves as the Children & Youth Engagement Coordinator for the Quality Improvement Center on Youth Engagement, Spaulding for Children, and Michigan Department of Health & Human Services. In this role, she coordinates a team with lived foster care experience.

Brittney has dedicated her free time as a voice for foster youth as president of the Michigan Youth Opportunity Initiative, state co-director for the Park West Foundation, and a member of the board of directors for the Student Advocacy Center, which works to promote the right to education for at-risk students. Brittney’s mentor at U-M remarks, “What best characterizes Brittney is her fierce commitment to advocacy, equity, and justice.” Her long-term goals include bringing robust systematic change to the child welfare sector and obtaining her PhD in Social Welfare.

CEW+ celebrates Brittney’s leadership and names her the Susan Quackenbush Scholar.