Kathy McCarrell, MSW

Ms. McCarrell received her BA in Social Work from Chapman University in 1981 and her MSW from the University of Houston, Texas in 1984. She then spent the next 7 years as a Senior Social Worker for Orange County Social Services Agency working in Emergency Response, Dependency Intake, Dependency Investigations, Vertical Intake, Family Reunification, and Adoptions. Kathy spent three years as the first forensic interviewer for the Orange County Child Abuse Services Team (CAST) interviewing over 1100 alleged victims of sexual abuse, severe physical abuse, and witness to homicide in collaboration with medical personnel, law enforcement, and the district attorney’s office.

In 1992, she took the position as the Executive Director of the Harbor UCLA- Child Sexual Abuse Crises Center where she supervised multidisciplinary investigations for Los Angeles County CPS. In 1995, she moved back to Orange County to accept the position of Executive Director for the Orange County Child Abuse Prevention Center. Under her 12 year tenure, she grew the agency from a $300,000 budget offering one program to a $5,000,000 organization offering 14 different programs to 52,000 clients per year.

In 2007, Ms. McCarrell moved to Austin, Texas where worked for the UT Austin, Graduate School of Social Work training child protective services workers all over the state of Texas. While in Austin, she received a Fulbright Scholarship to travel to the United Arab Emeritus to help them set up their first child protective services system. She also taught for the Institute for Shipboard Education’s Semester At Sea program while sailing to the Mediterranean and North Africa. Kathy currently teaches Child Abuse and Social Work at both Chapman and Brandman Universities.

Ms. McCarrell currently lives in Orange County and is CEO of the Heroes and Healthy Families program, which conducts combat stress conferences at military bases across the United States and Japan.