“I take the role of being a public servant very seriously,” she said. “You know the taxpayers pay for us, so I feel very responsible to not only hold our staff responsible so they are living up to the community’s expectations, but we’re charged with making sure these children are safe to the best of our ability and we do take that very seriously.”
The entire Job and Family Services operation was recently reorganized and renamed the Department of Human and Social Services so Executive Director Julie Gilbert can also take on the task of coordinating the countywide effort to tackle the burgeoning homeless problem.
As part of the agency revamp, former Children Services Director Shannon Glendon shifted over as director of JFS; her $113,669 salary is unchanged. Dierling was elevated from Children Services administrator to director and Child Support Enforcement Agency Assistant Director Narka Gray was promoted to a directorship position. Their salaries will go up to $100,880, a $13,853 increase for Dierling and $6,303 for Gray.
Gilbert said Dierling was an easy choice “for this really important role” given her 30 years of experience at the agency and strong leadership skills over the intervention department and also recently stepped in to oversee the ongoing units, “she had quite the heavy lift.”
“She has the proven ability to guide teams, make informed decisions, make all the tough decisions with confidence,” Gilbert said.
Dieling, 56, said she has worked in several units throughout the agency which gives her a unique perspective. She said they can’t work in “silos” because the system is essentially a process.
Children are removed from their homes for a variety of reasons and each unit within the agency has a different responsibility but she said she is a big believer — and has operated that way as a supervisor — in interconnectivity.
She said she and the other administrators were in constant contact on cases “so we could pull in the perspectives of other people, like people that have cases on the back end, what is your perspective when we’re making these decisions on the front end.”
“That really drives me to this day, just making sure the children are connected to their families as best as we can allow that and when it’s safe, and that our staff our connected within their units and within their departments and within the whole,” she said. “Understanding how these early decisions impact children later on, we’re not just looking at today, that’s part of the decision-making but it’s also where is this child going to be six months from now and a year from now.”
Dierling has five children of her own, three have graduated from college and started their careers and two are still in college. She said she was pondering what she’d do when she eventually retired and decided to go to law school at night at the Salmon P. Chase School of Law at Northern Kentucky University. She is about half-way to her degree.
“It’s been really helpful here too,” she said. “Just the critical thinking and learning different things about the law, I took a class on juvenile justice, we get a lot of teenagers here so just trying to find ways it can impact my job here.”
Gilbert said they made Dierling the acting director at first so they had time to “ensure it was a good fit for us and for her.”
Gilbert was promoted two months ago, fulfilling a promise the commissioners made to leaders from the various jurisdictions countywide to hire — Gilbert received a $17,117 raise bringing her salary up to $142,000 — someone who can marshal resources to help the homeless situation.
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