Octavia Sutherland

Contact Information

Villa Rica

About Mrs. Sutherland

Mrs. Sutherland is a graduate from Argosy University with a Master’s degree in Community Counseling; she completed her undergraduate degree from University of Connecticut with a Bachelor’s degree in Human Services. She has worked for several state and private agencies with adult, adolescents, and children with mental and behavioral health concerns. 

Here are a few contributions that she has made during her professional career:

  • Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), National Board Certified Counselor (NBCC), Certified School Counselor (CSC)
  • Department of Children and Families Services (DCFS) in its Permanency Unit (unit designed to find permanent homes for foster children)
  • Foster parent to about 10 children and adoptive parent to 1
  • Served as an active member of the Diversity Action Team (team that was established to ensure that foster children were placed with foster parent(s) that could meet their ethnic and cultural needs)
  • Elected by the Commissioner of the DCFS to head the Cultural Diversity Advisory Board
  • Trainer of PRIDE (classes to license perspective foster and adoptive parents)
  • Selected to be a part of a statewide initiative (KidCare) as a train the trainer (to teach educators to train community programs/agencies on becoming Wrap-Around provider)
  • Counseled juvenile delinquents (males) between the ages of 13-17 in an outdoor therapeutic setting (average length of stay for the youth was 9 – 12 months) 
  • Certified as a Therapeutic Crisis Intervention Instructor (Cornell University)
  • Department of Juvenile Justice in the following capacities: Probation Officer, High Intense Team (HIT) Supervisor, Probation supervisor and Program Manger
  • Presented quarterly at Youth Against Violence (programs designed by Douglas County Police Department to prevent gang violence)
  • Presenter at University of Georgia (The Prison Pipeline: The Intersection of Childhood and the Criminal Justice System; to speak out against the revolving door from juvenile detention centers to adult penitentiaries)
  • Panelist for the Gang Planning and Mobilization Call to Action (at Morehouse School of Medicine; where she sat on their advisory board in an effort to combat gang activity in metro Atlanta)