Ms. Stepanik has worked in residential and day treatment juvenile justice and adolescent Behavioral Health facilities for more than 38 years. Her most recent experience has been opening female juvenile rehabilitation programs in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Florida where she developed, trained and managed a gender responsive program for adjudicated female felony offenders. Known for her gender specific program development and training abilities, she is often called upon nationally to provide expert juvenile justice services and consultation and was a guest presenter at the Girls Symposium for the city of Philadelphia and for the Adolescent Treatment Issues Conference sponsored by the Florida Juvenile Justice Association. 

Ms. Stepanik started her juvenile justice career at a Juvenile Training School with the Ohio Youth Commission in 1968 and was promoted to Director of Health Services of Mohican Youth Center, a 120 bed Ohio Department of Youth Services institution where she worked with male felony offenders for 10 years. During that time she received training and experience in Reality Therapy, Group Facilitation, Transactional Analysis, Behavior Modification and Guided Group Interaction. She worked at The Cleveland Clinic Foundation as a primary therapist with female eating disordered patients and was the Clinical Treatment Team Liaison with the psychiatrists and residents at that hospital.

Ms. Stepanik performed administrative and clinical positions in a host of other children’s services organizations in the eastern seaboard states.  Ms. Stepanik is published in the field, is a gender specific advocate and consultant, and provided professional and consultative services to the Ohio, Texas, West Virginia and Florida Departments of Juvenile Justice.    Her Florida based business KIDS-R-BEST is a Certified Minority Business Enterprise in the State of Florida. Ms. Stepanik is an Ohio and Florida Licensed RN, certified in Psychiatric Nursing by the American Nursing Association.

She is also a Florida Licensed Health Care Risk Manager with extensive education and practical experience in incident reporting tracking and trending and Quality Improvement Initiative development. She acted in the capacity of consultant with the Brown Schools and Lighthouse Care Centers as a compliance/quality improvement and risk management advisor.

Presently, Barbara is working in partnership as the Director of Operations of Passion Flower Productions, Inc. in ministry to “at risk” adult females. She has just authored a faith-based inspirational book titled “Pretty Is as Pretty Doesn’t and is completing a faith based CD of Guided Imagery for Passion Flower Productions, Inc.