Virginia Olivas, MSW

Virginia Olivas, MSW, is in her eighth year as a member of the Azusa Pacific University field practicum faculty in the MSW program. She also serves as the program coordinator of the L.A. Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) child welfare program. Virginia teaches field seminar classes for generalist foundation year students as well as the specialization year child welfare field seminar class.

As a bilingual and bicultural social worker, Virginia has over twenty-five years of experience in child welfare, with a specialization in adoptions and working with the Latino community. For twelve years, she supervised MSW students from various local universities. Virginia has a background as a program manager for a non–profit resource family agency and as a permanency-planning mediator where she mediated post-adoption contact agreements, which served to honor connections for adoptees with their birth families. Virginia is passionate about child welfare both as a professional and an adoptive parent.