Vice President of Family & Community-Based Services

Emily Rawsky

 Emily Rawsky heads up Little City’s Foster Care & Adoption program, bringing more than 25 years of experience in child welfare and human services. Emily oversees a team responsible for recruiting and supporting foster/adoptive families to provide loving homes to traditional, lower-needs youth and youth with special needs – including intellectual, developmental, and emotional/behavioral disabilities – who have been identified by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services as being abused or neglected.  

Emily first joined Little City in 2007 as a therapeutic foster care case manager and also served as a licensing representative, supervisor, and then program manager, when she left in 2014 for a brief stint to explore work in other areas of child welfare. She returned to Little City in 2015 and has worked since then as a director, deputy program officer, and now Vice President of Family & Community-Based Services.  

In her current role, Emily and her team focus on helping youth exit foster care by reunifying with their birth families; attaining subsidized guardianship or adoption; attaining independence through a transition to college; living independently; or transitioning to adult services with the Department of Human Services. The team also provides essential case management and clinical services that support individuals to attain the least restrictive environments possible in their own homes and communities. 

When Emily first started at Little City, the Foster Care & Adoption program served approximately 75 youth out of the Chicago office. It now serves more than 250 youth out of three sites located in Chicago, Matteson, and Joliet, IL. The program has also expanded its clinical services to offer mental health and behavioral therapy to Little City residents, participants, and the community at large. During Emily’s tenure, Little City’s Foster Care & Adoption program has attained the Human Rights Campaign’s All Children All Families Seal of Recognition for being culturally competent in serving LGBTQIA+ youth and families, the first program in Illinois to achieve this recognition.   

Earlier in her career, Emily worked in residential, school, crisis response, housing-insecure and homeless shelters, adult care facilities, adoption, and foster care settings. Various roles prior to Little City included crisis intervention, school social work, therapeutic foster care, and adoption in the St. Louis and Washington, D.C. areas.  

Emily finds that Little City’s mission, values, beliefs, and vision align with her own. She is called to the work of serving vulnerable and underserved youth and adults with I/DD and their families due to her passion for advocating for those in need of a voice to promote equality, equity, safety, and wellbeing in our challenging and complex world, and to make a difference in the lives of others. 

Emily earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Michigan State University and a master’s in social work from Washington University in St. Louis. She is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW).  

Connect with Emily
[email protected] 
(847) 652-2267  

“Be the Change You Wish to See in the World”
-Ghandi