Local native now director of NE Children & Family Services
Helping those in need has been a lifelong goal mission for Dr. Alyssa Bish as she began her service as the Nebraska Children & Family Services director for the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services at the end of the year.
“It’s an incredible honor and I’m grateful for the moment, wanting to wake up every day to work hard and to fight for kids and to do what’s right,” Bish said.
The daughter of Eldon and Cathy Bish grew up on her family’s farm with her sister outside of Aurora, attending Giltner Public Schools before transferring to Aurora during her sixth grade year. When she started high school, her aspiration to help children began through her volunteer work at Royal Family Kids, a camp dedicated to help children in Grand Island and York who experienced neglect and abuse.
“While I was at that camp, one, I just realized how fortunate I was for the opportunities that I had and two, I was blown away by the resiliency of these kids who had experienced such hard things in their lives,” Bish said. “We were talking about what family meant to them or how they were going to find hope through things that were incredibly difficult. That camp and the relationships I had with my campers that I saw year after year is what inspired me to look into it more when I was in college.”
After graduating from Aurora High School in 2011, Bish attended Wayne State College and studied communications. Following her time at Wayne she attended the University of Missouri-Columbia for her master of public affairs and doctor of philosophy.
“I really wanted to advocate for kids that were in (foster) care, because they regularly don’t have a voice,” she stated. “I wanted to be somebody who could be at the table for them and nobody could tell me I couldn’t because I don’t have the credentials. I was like, ‘I’m going to get back and sit at the table and be a mom of these kids.”
In 2019, Bish took on several roles in Missouri’s Department of Social Services, such as serving in the director’s office over operational excellence, which included prevention and training people within social services.
“I was the person that when things were on fire, they brought me in to help solve what was on fire and then support the team,” she said. “I worked a lot with teams and did a lot of supporting kids and families from multiple levels.”
Prior to moving back to Nebraska, Bish was appointed by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson to be the director of personnel for the State of Missouri.
“I oversaw everything from HR to benefits to recruitment, leadership, training and all sorts of things,” she said.
Bish further explained that work as director involved helping people within the workforce facing burnout symptoms, a common occurrence that she and others within social services deal with as well as witness.
“I knew the job was hard, but to see it first-hand, the long hours, the second-hand trauma that staff experience just from what they see when they enter a home to protect a kid to everyone that you work with when you think about the system, it’s just a very demanding job,” she stated. “A lot of people, because they care so deeply about what they do, sacrifice a lot of personal time with their own families and I think it just really drove home for me that we have families that need our support.”
When a child has permanency with a family or seeing her co-workers thrive in their department, the work she has accomplished has overshadowed the hardships.
“Those are the ones that stick with me just as a person because I’m incredibly relational,” Bish commented. “From a macro level, I would say the two things I’m the most proud of was one working with the team that did our family called FFPSA, which is just a federal program for the Family First Services Prevention Act.”
FFPSA will allow federal funds to cover prevention program costs and provide help to keep children with their families and out of foster care.
“We had to work with a lot of stakeholders and I just had an incredible team working on our Family First plan and am really proud of the work we did to submit that plan to set Missouri up for success in terms of prevention,” Bish stated.
Another accomplishment the director holds most dear is her position as chair at the Operational Excellence Summit.
“I would say 2000 folks had joined us across the nation, virtually and in-person, and we talked about how do we best serve our customers,” she explained. “Customers can be families, it can go and get your DMV if it’s about going to a park, everything that state government does. It was all about how we teach our team members and across the state to think about our primary customer, those we serve, and to do it in the most effective and efficient way possible. Running that summit and then working with the executive branch was just the highlight to see what we could do together to make an impact.”
In her latest role at CFS, Bish continues providing support for children in foster care.
“We always try to keep the child with a family and if we keep them for safety reasons, they come into our care and then we work with that family to establish permanency for those kids,” she said. “All things foster care, including adoption, guardianship, anything you think of in terms of child welfare in our space.”
Returning to Nebraska
Six months into her position in Lincoln, the new director expressed her desire to give back to her state and be a face families and children can count on to help them.
“I’m just another human like everybody else,” Bish commented. “The honor to be back in Nebraska to serve the state that helped raise me and have the opportunity to have an impact on what I consider to be some of our most vulnerable, it’s a high calling that I don’t take lightly.”
Bish lives in Lincoln with her family and she cherishes the time she now gets to spend with them.
“We are that Nebraska family that faithfully wears red every Saturday,” she commented. “My grandpa has had season tickets since the early 60’s to the football stadium. My family goes to every game and we’re just really close and excited to be home.”
As for her future plans, Bish wants to continue to create an uplifting environment for children, their families and everyone involved within family services.
“This feels like a dream come true,” Bish concluded. “I just feel incredibly blessed by the Lord to have gotten the role, because I have a position in what I consider passionate work, which is taking care of kids and families.”