While it is wonderful to recognize the heroes during National Foster Care Month, we must also be aware of the realities of the foster care system and be willing to make a change. A change that will allow the heroes we celebrate to shine, unencumbered by complicated, outdated processes. If we take a glance through the lens of capacity, we will find a starting point so that we can do more good for children and families.
Turnover is an unprecedented challenge that threatens the well-being of children. But staff is hard to find, harder to retain, and we are hiring back into the same systems that haven’t addressed fundamental challenges that have existed for decades. The only way to improve this reality to rethink our approach.
What if, instead of working so hard to appreciate the sacrifice, child welfare leaders took a long look in the mirror to see why social workers must sacrifice work-life balance in the first place? Maybe the question isn't about how we appreciate social workers well. Maybe the real question is how we get off the hamster wheel and create system capacity, so appreciation is reserved for a job well done, not to make up for a personal life lost.
How the Indiana Department of Child Services used the pandemic to transform their work to help children and families.
Permanency for kids, is one of the most risky and critical decisions made in all of government and getting to the finish line is a laborious process with thousands of factors that will influence the time it takes to get there. But when we are there, our research shows we don't run through the finish line, in fact, our system has a propensity to start walking or even crawling at this phase when in fact, we should be sprinting once a permanency decision has been made.
The new promise of CCWIS is to build systems that support and coach and help caseworkers move the work.
Dedicated to "transformation" and the work we do to improve service for families, children, and clients. By Bill Bott and Lori Wolff
Child welfare has a pipe problem. Our pipes can't handle this much pressure... But there's another way, a way to relive the pressure and unleash the amazing internal motivation of our people ... and it starts with fixing the plumbing.
When the press writes about failures in the child welfare system, the tragedies are unique, but the pattern is often all too familiar. A family has been involved with the agency multiple times, signs of risk were missed, and the result is significant harm or even death. It’s hard to read about a set of [...]
Child welfare supervisors have an incredibly difficult job. One that is made even more complex by the broad role they play.
