Meet the Home Visiting Team
Amy Jenkins
Home- and Community- Based Early Intervention Director
Amy Jenkins has a Master’s Degree in Education and began working with children and their families in 1992. She is the director of the Home- and Community-Based Early Intervention Program at Siskin Children’s Institute. She supervises the home visitors who serve more than 250 families at any one time, in the 10 counties of the Southeast District of Tennessee. Amy is a certified Routines-Based Interview trainer (2010), certified Routines-Based Home Visiting Trainer, has coordinated and presented during the Routines-Based Interview Certification Institute since 2012, as well as the newly added Routines-Based Home Visiting Training Institute (2015). She presents at numerous conferences across Tennessee in Routines-Based Early Intervention and other Early Childhood and Early Intervention Topics and is currently providing training and technical assistance to Tennessee and other states on evidence-based best practices.
Each holiday season, Amy leads Lexi’s Legacy, a program designed to help needy families with gifts at Christmas. She was selected by Governor Haslam to sit on the State Interagency Coordinating Council for Tennessee, in which she is Vice President, and is currently a member of several professional organizations and boards. Amy is a member of the Southeast Tennessee Interagency Council and a member of the TEIS ChildFind committee. She also serves as director of Early Intervention Behavior Specialist Program for the Institute. Amy grew up in Chattanooga and lives there with her husband and teenage daughter.
Deidra Love
Early Intervention Behavior Specialist
Deidra Love serves children with challenging behaviors, autism and severe learning difficulties and their families by providing behavioral consultation to professionals including early interventionists, therapists and preschool/daycare teachers in the state . She is certified as a PreK-12 special education teacher and has a master’s degree in early childhood education special education. Deidra has worked as both a classroom teacher and home-based early interventionist for more than 17 years, and she has a passion for helping parents and caregivers understand their child’s behaviors and see themselves as confident, capable teachers of their children. She works closely with Amy Jenkins on challenging behaviors and parenting in the context of Routines-Based Early Intervention.
Azusa Dance
Special Projects
Since 2010, Azusa Dance has handled the logistics for the Siskin Home Visiting Program. She serves maintaining the general office, finance, and grants manager. She assists the early intervention specialists, interns, and trainees in the office as well as those affiliated with the Home Visiting Program outside the office conducting field work. Azusa’s formal training includes a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and an associate’s degree in computer programming and data processing. Her many years of experience in education, awareness, and community involvement in Hamilton County and East Tennessee, help her serve an important role for the home visiting program, as an advocate for children and families of all abilities.
Shea Hensley - Intern
Master's of Education in School Counseling
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Shea's work at Siskin with the Home Visiting Program . Her work involves data entry and analysis for the HCBEI Program. She currently is working on a project involving analysis of the MEISR and GOLD assessments. She has a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from East Tennessee State University with a concentration in Child Psychology and is currently working towards her Master's of Education in School Counseling. Shea has a love for helping others and enjoys working with children in her community. Shea is working with concepts of Routines-Based Early Intervention.
Shea currently works as the Children's Ministry Assistant at Stuart Heights Baptist Church .
