Florida Guardian ad Litem Academy

Larry Cooper, MSW, LCSW has supervised prevention and intervention programs at CHN since 2001. He has presented locally, statewide and nationally on his work with children and relative caregiver families. He was recognized as 2016 Social Worker of the Year by the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Tampa Unit and the 2017 Social Worker of the Year by the Florida Coalition for Children. This year he received the Florida Department of Children and Families, 2018 Child Welfare Champion Award at the September Statewide Dependency Summit for his nationally recognized work on Kinship Care. He has successfully administered large community-based support services to children and families in the Tampa Bay area during his tenure at CHN and in his current role oversees SEEDS, Healthy Families, Children’s Board Family Resource Centers, Kinship and the Pinellas Support Team. The CHN Kinship program currently serves (6) counties throughout central Florida. Additionally, Mr. Cooper led a federally-funded Navigation grant, one of only seven awarded nationally from The Children’s Bureau under the 2008 Foster Connections legislation from 2012-2015 which resulted in one of the most rigorously evaluated Kinship Navigator programs in the country.Mr. Cooper earned both his Master’s of Social Work degree in 1993 and his Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology in 1990 at the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa.