Social Empowerment Texas: Board Member

Who is Social Empowerment Texas:

Social Empowerment Texas exists to empower child welfare social workers in Texas by providing encouragement, relationship and empowerment so that child welfare social workers stay in their job longer, supporting children towards permanency quicker and foster parents foster for longer.

Activities of Social Empowerment Texas will include appreciation events, care and encouragement one-on-one for social workers, and support for their case loads by helping to support families or children’s needs.

All Texas and Federal formation documents were submitted on January 27, 2026 and our 501c3 documentation was received March, 2 2026!. We believe 2026 will be mostly a planning year for policies, website and marketing tools, finding partners, setting up processes for impact tracking and looking for and applying for grant funding.

Lauren Welch, the Founder and Executive Director is a Grant Professional Certified (GPC) and has years of grant and other fundraising experience. You can find her Linkedin Profile here.

Qualifications for Board Members:

• Live in the Central Texas or surrounding area (in one of the region 7 DPFS counties, list found here.)
• Have experience (personally or professionally) with the child welfare system in any capacity, you care about the child welfare system, the social workers, families and children.
• Your ability to take part in a give AND get policy. The board has approved a give AND get policy for the Board of Directors - with no minimum amount to donate personally. The GET is supporting the organization by helping connect the team to funding or other opportunities through personal connections.
• During the 2026 year, we will start forming the needed committees and we ask for membership on one of the two committees.
• Appointments for board members approved in our bylaws are 3 years.
• We currently meet every 3 months on the first Monday of every 3rd month at 10 CST. The next meeting is May 4.

Current Board Members:

The current Board of Directors is made up of 5 members who live in the Austin area and in other communities in San Diego CA and in Northern Virginia. Some of these members are current social workers or people who work in similar spaces. We have an active President, Secretary and Treasurer. We communicate through group text and emails currently. Lauren sends out weekly update emails between board meetings.

Meet Our Board Members https://socialempowertx.org/our-story/