CALM (Child Abuse Listening Mediation) is proud to announce that Elizabeth “Elly” Rumelt, the director of Center-Based Services at CALM, was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Santa Barbara Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers.
Each year, the Santa Barbara Chapter of the NASW selects a social worker for this award to celebrate a lifetime of achievement. In honoring the Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, NASW recognizes the best social work values and accomplishments demonstrated in the social worker’s lifetime career.
Rumelt has dedicated her professional career to social service. She began her social work career at Jewish Family and Children’s Services in Boston, Mass., after earning her master’s degree in social work from Boston University School of Social Work in 1967.
With an extensive background in clinical social work, she became the director of behavioral science curriculum at the UCLA Division of Family Medicine in 1981, only leaving in 1993 to take her passion overseas as a counselor for INSEAD (Institut European d’Administration des Affaires) in Fontainebleu, France.
Upon her return, Rumelt was a Coordinator for 1736 Family Crisis Center in Los Angeles and has been the director of Center-Based Services for CALM since 1998.
Her commitment to serve the community is apparent in all her endeavors, and throughout her extensive career she has never lost track of the main purpose of her work, which is to help the Santa Barbara community’s most vulnerable children and families. She has maintained her focus on the values that are at the heart of CALM’s work with parents and children, and has been a staunch advocate for the quality of services in the face of the financial and bureaucratic pressures of the times.
Rumelt’s colleagues at CALM and throughout the community admire and respect her for her wisdom, vast experience, generosity and humanity, and she has been an inspiration to so many over the course of her accomplished career.
CALM was founded in 1970 to reach stressed parents before they hurt their children. CALM continues to be the only nonprofit agency in Santa Barbara County focusing solely on preventing, assessing and treating child abuse and family violence through comprehensive, cutting-edge programs. CALM offers children, families and adults a safe, nonjudgmental, caring and strength-based environment to heal and increase family well-being.
For more information about all of CALM’s services, please call 805.965.2376 or click here.
— Jennifer Zacharias is a publicist representing CALM.