Vickey Perkins started her career sitting in the living rooms of families, helping their children one on one. Those early days are really the key to understanding everything she has built since. Today, as Director of Children and Family Services (CFS), she oversees a team that spans clinical staff, administrators, and the stakeholders who refer families to Hope. She collaborates with the agency’s entire leadership team, keeps the program on budget, and shows up as a leader in the wider community. But ask her colleagues, and they’ll tell you her titles barely capture what she actually does.

Ask them to describe her in a single word, and “integrity” comes up first. She is, as one colleague put it, “the backbone of Children and Family Services,” not just because of what she manages, but because of how she leads.

Vickey has been with Hope for 18 years and has been a leader in Early Childhood Special Education since 2002, supporting infants, toddlers, and their families for her entire career. Today, she oversees Hope’s early intervention services across several Bay Area counties, guided by the belief that children thrive through emotional security, supportive relationships, and inclusive opportunities. She holds a BA in Child Development, a Teaching Credential, and an MA in Special Education. In 2025, she received SARC’s Service Above Self Award, recognition of a career spent showing up for children and families.

Under her leadership, CFS has become one of the go-to programs for infant and toddler early intervention services in the Bay Area. Its partnerships with organizations like San Andreas Regional Center (SARC), GGRC, and Regional Center East Bay reflect years of relationship building and a reputation for excellence that regional centers actively seek out. Colleagues describe the program as having reached “gold standard” status, a reputation that translates directly into more families being connected to care.

That growth hasn’t happened by accident. Vickey has led the expansion of CFS’s specialty staff, growing the team from a small, part-time roster of physical and occupational therapists into a program with full-time PTs and OTs on staff, alongside a broader network of contractors and developmental specialists. When SARC asked the program to hire more staff so it could serve more children, Vickey took that charge to heart, steadily building both the size and the skill of her team.

Vickey’s leadership is grounded in her own history as an early childhood special educator and early intervention provider. Long before she led the program, she was out in the field, sitting on living room floors, running center based programs, and working directly with families in their homes. That firsthand experience shapes how she leads today. It informs her advocacy for strong client services and her ability to mentor and support her staff with a genuine understanding of the work they do.

That same field experience gives CFS its distinct character within Hope Services. As one colleague put it, CFS staff are “in the living rooms,” present with families at some of their most vulnerable moments, helping them understand what lies ahead and learn to see their child fully for who they are. It’s relationship centered work, and Vickey has never lost sight of that, even as her role has grown.

Ask what Vickey has built that will outlast her time in this role, and one answer comes up right away: the program’s annual holiday gift giving campaign. In partnership with Family Giving Tree and several private community partners, Vickey has helped ensure that every child in the program, and now every one of their siblings up to age 18, receives a holiday gift. What began as a small effort has grown steadily over the years, expanding again and again to reach more family members during a season that can be especially hard, financially and emotionally, for families managing a child’s special needs.

Vickey personally makes sure each gift is thoughtfully matched to the child or sibling receiving it. It’s a significant undertaking, and a true team effort.

Vickey’s impact on her staff runs just as deep as her impact on families. She has brought the team back together for in person monthly meetings, launched monthly reflective practice groups to give staff a safe space to process the emotional weight of the work, and brought in outside experts, from Community Solutions to California Children’s Services, to keep the team’s clinical training sharp and current.

Colleagues describe her as a mentor to the team as a whole. Her door is always open for questions or concerns. She has been known to advocate for a colleague’s growth even when it might mean that person moving on from CFS, because, as she has said, she wants her team to always know their opportunities and have the chance to grow.

She also led the program through the implementation and ongoing rollout of SetWorks, taking a hands on leadership role to make sure it succeeded. And she hasn’t let the big projects overshadow the small ones. She’s known for showing up for Hope’s holiday party and summer BBQ, events that colleagues say do real work in building a sense of community, One Hope.

Behind the celebrations and the growth lies an ongoing challenge that few outside the program fully see: funding. Reimbursement rates from regional centers have been cut over the years, limiting how much support the program can provide to families.

Vickey, alongside Hope’s leadership, development team, and grant writers, works continually to find alternative funding sources so families can receive the highest quality of care, not simply what standard reimbursement allows. It’s a challenge her colleagues hope more of the community comes to understand, whether at Innovate with Hope, the Coastal Cares Gala, or other events that support the program’s mission.

Some of the fondest memories colleagues share about Vickey come from the small, in between moments as much as the big ones. There were the monthly meetings at SARC, sitting side by side as program managers, celebrating wins and commiserating over challenges together. There was the pride of celebrating her 2025 Service Above Self Award. And there’s the yearly scene of loading up cars with presents from Family Giving Tree, each car turned, for a day, into Santa’s sleigh.

Team building events bring out another side of her entirely. Colleagues joke that you do not want to be on the opposing team when Vickey is playing Pictionary or trivia. She plays to win.

From the living rooms of the families she serves, to the leadership meetings that shape the program’s future, to the shared memories that keep a team close, Vickey Perkins has spent her career building something that will endure well beyond any single achievement: a program, and a community, defined by integrity, connection, and care.