Photo Provided Kathy Szafran, left, Crittenton Services president and chief executive officer, is shown with Crittenton teacher Jan Bragg, holdingBragg’s plaque denoting her Child Care Worker of the Year from the West Virginia Child Care Association.

A Wheeling classroom specialist dedicated to helping at-risk students has been recognized by a state association for extraordinary work despite her own life-threatening challenges. Crittenton Services’ alternative school instructor Jan Bragg won the honor of Child Care Worker of the Year at the West Virginia Child Care Association’s Fall Conference held recently in Charleston. Adjudicated by a panel of behavioral health professionals who are not members of the state association, the distinction was awarded following her nomination by Crittenton’s vice president of residential services, Tracee Chambers. A seven-year veteran of Crittenton’s on-site alternative school in Elm Grove, Wheeling, Bragg specializes in helping teenage girls with traumatic life circumstances complete their educations and embark on a life of self-sufficiency. While continuing to work to help these young women transcend their enormous challenges, Bragg developed a crisis of her own. She learned that the over-the-counter medications she had been taking at the suggestion of her physician had irreparably damaged her kidneys. Diagnosed with end-stage renal failure, she began dialysis three times a week at the beginning of the school year last year. She had some complications along the way, including infections at the site of her catheter in her arm, and the collapse of veins resulted in the need for a central line in her neck.