Business Process Redesign
Redefining Social Worker Appreciation: How to create a system of capacity rather than a position of sacrifice
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.
When Virtual Became the Reality: Three pandemic lessons to shape the future of child welfare
For more than a year we shifted work to a virtual platform out of necessity, and as we safely return to in-person activities it would be easy to sprint as fast as possible back to “the way we did things before COVID-19”. But, what if instead of sprinting we took the time to pause and reflect? Perhaps some of our new virtual practices make child welfare better.
Family First… Second: Finding a solution to managing the workflow
The goals associated with Family First are both noble and needed. If we do not fix our capacity crisis in child welfare, we may never see the results we hope to achieve.
Performance Improvement
Eliminate Blind Spots to Improve Safety: More Eyes More Often
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 [...]
The Fen-Phen Phenomenon is Killing Our Children
We all agree child welfare in our world is not as healthy as we would like it to be. No one wants to see vulnerable children at risk, but it seems like every attempt to get healthier isn’t working, and we are all clinging to the hope that the next thing we try will be the real deal.
The Unintended Consequences of Improvement
Sometimes when we make reforms, government jobs get better too.
Measurement
The Dark Side of Accountability
Ken Miller draws from his latest book to explain how management-by-fear accountability systems rarely work and produce devastating side effects.