“Abby is a great client advocate and always empowers her clients to be as independent as they can and want to be. She is a proponent of the least restrictive alternative. She’s always very professional and available for her clients. Abby takes a holistic approach to serving our clients and makes sure they feel respected.”
—Tracey Mooser, Service Coordinator
“Abby excels at supporting others, whether that be assisting her team members with developing ideas, listening to a vent session, providing perfectly timed sarcasm or coming up with ‘out-of-the-box’ strategies to meet her clients’ needs. She will always take a minute to hear someone out and will go the extra mile to help how she can. I am proud to work with someone so dedicated and passionate about advocacy on my team!”
—Theresa Shell, Senior Case Manager
“I am in the office next to Abby and when I listen to the way that she speaks to our consumers, it’s like she is speaking with a peer/colleague. She treats the people we serve with a great deal of respect and dignity.”
—Bonnie Thorson Young, Vice President of Developmental Services
As a Principal Service Coordinator with our IDD Crisis Prevention and Response Team, Abby works with clients with Intellectual or Developmental Disabilities (IDD) who are experiencing psychiatric and behavioral crisis. She provides intensive case management, resource linkage, alternative sentencing assistance, waiver application and advocacy through person-centered planning. Her biggest responsibility is to provide hope through compassionate care and by promoting the self-direction of her consumers.
Abby’s co-workers value her passion, advocacy, sense of humor and ability to think outside the box and enact creative solutions. In fact, Ruhiyyih Henderson, Unit Manager II, writes that “Abby is one of the most passionate, concerned, caring people that I know. She will never leave a client hanging.” Abby demonstrated her dedication to clients this past holiday season, when she and a coworker spent a Saturday morning helping a client move into her own apartment. Abby even collected furniture donations from around the community and delivered it to the client.
Abby came to Centerstone Kentucky in 2009 and spent two and a half years with the Bingham Intermediate Care Facility. After leaving briefly, she returned in 2012 to work at Central State Hospital before transferring to our Developmental Services Division in 2015 to work on the Crisis Team. During her time at Central State, Abby helped to transition a man back into the community who had been institutionalized for 30 years. She worked with community partners to help meet his complex support needs and assisted in safety planning activities that helped him fulfill his lifelong wish of returning to the ocean for the first time in over 35 years!
Abby is married to her husband Scott and they have four children: Alexander (11), Walter (7), Danny (2) and Caroline (10 months). She is currently pursuing her Master’s Degree in Applied Behavior Analysis. Abby is interested in helping to reduce recidivism of clients with low adaptive skills and cognitive deficits in the criminal justice system and psychiatric facilities. In her free time, she enjoys reading mystery novels, spending time with her family, antiquing and traveling.
FAVORITE MOVIE: Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
FAVORITE FOOD: Italian
FAVORITE QUOTE: “Struggles are all that the world sees, and it usually misunderstands them. It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one.” —Karl A. Menninger