 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
A. Multiple Response System: Seven Strategies
The underlying beliefs of a family-centered System of Care approach to child welfare are as follows:
• Safety of the child is the first concern.
• Children have the right to their family.
• The family is the fundamental resource for the nurturing of children.
• Parents should be supported in their efforts to care for their children.
• Families are diverse and have the right to be respected for their special cultural, racial, ethnic, and religious traditions; children can flourish in different types of families.
• A crisis is an opportunity for change.
• Inappropriate intervention can do harm.
• Families who seem hopeless can grow and change.
• Family members are our colleagues.
• It is our job to instill hope.
The principles of family-centered practice and System of Care reflect the belief that the family is its own primary source of intervention and determines who its members are. The family is viewed as a system within a larger social and environmental context. As a result, interventions focus on accessing the family’s immediate and extended community through needs assessment, resource identification and service delivery. Family- centered practice employing a SOC approach respects the family’s right of self determination and capabilities, and assumes the family has the capacity to grow and change when provided the proper supportive interventions. This extends into the provision of placement services by involving the family in developing and implementing a plan for reunification, partnering with the foster family in temporary placement, and if necessary, working to preserve the child’s placement in a new, permanent adoptive family. Family- centered practice within a System of Care framework develops strengths, enhances potential, and empowers families to identify and resolve their own problems.
1. Collaboration between Work First and Child Welfare
• Reducing the number of times family members need to repeat the same information.
• Involving Work First as a preventative effort.
• Reducing the number of children needing CPS and placement services.
• Preventing recidivism of abuse, neglect and dependency by providing on-going services through Work First.
2. Strengths Based Structured Intake
• Respectfully allowing reporters to be heard, supported, and encouraged while improving the quality and consistency of information gathered through highly structured intake procedures that focus on family strengths in an effort to ensure the safety of children.
3. Choice of Two Approaches to Reports of Child Abuse, Neglect, or Dependency
• Protecting the safety of children in the most severe cases by not treating all reports in the same way, and missing some clear need for immediate action.
• Engaging some families in services that could enable them to better parent their children.
• Not overlooking vital information about the strengths of the family, the supports they have, and their motivation to change.
• Better serving many of the families reported to CPS in ways that focus more on helping rather than “punishing” them.
4. Coordination between Law Enforcement Agencies and Child Protective Services for the Investigative Assessment Approach
• Achieving joint efforts in interviewing and ensuring safety of families and children.
• Ensuring an effective working relationship.
• As a result, perpetrators will be held accountable for harming children.
• The number of interviews children experience will be reduced, preventing / reducing retraumatization.
• The evidence process for criminal prosecution will be enhanced.
5. Redesign of CPS In Home Services
• Providing the most intensive services and contacts to families with the greatest needs, while those with fewer needs receive less intensive services/contacts.
• Delivering services within the context of the family’s own community and culture.
• Social workers better identifying risks in their work with families.
• Having the option of receiving supportive/voluntary services available for families where there is a low risk of harm.
• Engaging families in the planning process, and producing better outcomes of safety, permanence, and well-being for children.
6. Child and Family Teams During the Provision of CPS In-Home Services
• Improving the decision-making process.
• Encouraging the support and buy-in of the family, extended family, and the community in the planning and assessment process.
• Developing specific, individualized, and appropriate interventions for children and families.
• Recognizing the birth family as an expert.
7. Shared Parenting Meetings During the First 7 days of Placement Out of the Home
• Keeping the family of origin actively involved in their role as parents of their child.
• Cultivating a nurturing relationship between the birth parents and the foster parents.
• Foster parents becoming mentors for the birth family regarding appropriate parenting.
|
For questions or clarification on any of the policy contained in these manuals, please contact your local county office. |
| |||||||||||||