Community Hospice & Palliative Care Employee Earns ‘Social Worker of the Year’ Honors

JACKSONVILLE—The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Florida Chapter’s Northeast Unit honored Community Hospice & Palliative Care Psychosocial Specialist Kelly Racine, MSW (pictured, right) as its Social Worker of the Year at the unit’s annual breakfast and awards event Tuesday, March 6 at Epping Forest Yacht Club in Jacksonville./

Racine, a 17-year veteran of Community Hospice & Palliative Care, has served as a mentor and guide to new social workers and a compassionate guide to thousands of patients at the end of life, as well as to children coping with grief as a volunteer at Community Hospice & Palliative Care’s Camp Healing Powers®. She also gives of her time each year to participate in medical mission trips to Central America.

Racine was nominated by Roxanne Miller (pictured, right), palliative care social worker at Baptist Medical Center Jacksonville. In her nomination, Racine was described as, “an excellent communicator [who can] easily see the strengths in others. She approaches her work with humility and views her service to the terminally ill as sacred work.”

Racine was introduced at the event by Community Hospice & Palliative Care president and CEO Susan Ponder-Stansel, herself a 2012 Social Worker of the Year honoree from the same body.