Focus on Safe Case Closure

Jamie:

For the “Purple Team,” we focused on Family Safety, Risk, and Permanency (FSRP) Services for our work at the mini-summit, really zeroing in on safe case closure, which is the outcome we want for all FSRP cases.

While talking about how we could improve our services, a key issue that kept popping up was “proactive relationships,” so we decided to devote considerable mini-summit time to creating strategies for more proactive relationships.

We identified many strengths, especially around the contribution of different ranges of expertise and working together around specific issues.  We also identified areas of improvement, and a great deal of that revolved around communication.  As partners, we could see the potential for improvements.

Creating the Opportunity for Shared Success

Connie:

We developed a group that met monthly to design and implement the mini-summits. We started the planning process with the basics, such as who to invite, how to make it convenient for people in a wide geographical are to attend, how long it would be, etc.

When we talked about who should participate, that really brought to the surface how important collaboration would be in improving services. When we talk about coordinating services for families, a lot of people are involved from so many areas. Casting a broad net of participants gave us a comprehensive approach to improving services.

Jamie took charge of the “Purple Team,” which focused on Pottawattamie, Mills, and Fremont counties. I organized the “Pink Team,” representing Audubon, Carroll, Greene, Guthrie, Cass, Montgomery, Page, and Taylor counties.

Jamie and I took the momentum from the statewide summit and plugged it into localized mini-summits.

Shared Goal of Helping Families Succeed

Connie:

I’d heard about the work the Child Welfare Partners Committee (CWPC) was doing, but I didn’t know what to expect when I attended the statewide summit. To experience the open exchange of ideas and discussion was truly enlightening.

Everyone brought their unique perspective and together we were able to generate real momentum, which we can translate into better outcomes for families.

When we held our first local mini-summit, that day was probably one of the most positive and productive days in my career. It was wonderful to sit at the table with such a diverse range of professionals – child protective staff, social work case managers, judges, supervisors, family team meeting facilitators… We asked the question, “What are our strengths?”

We talked about how we could apply those to the challenges we face. Then we talked about what wasn’t working, and which were the most important issues to problem-solve to achieve the outcomes we need. Essentially we focused on the fact that everyone at the mini-summit shared the same goal of helping families succeed. We may serve in different roles, but we’re unified in that goal.

Summit Meetings

In June 2010, professionals from all over Iowa, from many different roles, met for a one-day summit, the Child Welfare Partnership Summit. The focus was improving outcomes for Iowa children and families and reinforce partnership at all levels.

Each of the five (5) DHS service areas was represented by a team of 20 participants to the summit. The teams comprised of DHS Front Line Supervisors, Provider (Safety Plan/FSRP Services and Iowa KidsNet) Front Line Supervisors, DHS Front Line Staff, and Provider (Safety Plan/FSRP Services and Iowa KidsNet) Front Line Staff.

The summit was neither training nor downloading of information. The majority of the summit was spent in facilitated dialogue about how well DHS and Providers are working together as partners, both on specific practice issues as well as on the respectful relationships needed to support good practice. The breakout sessions included the following topics:


1. Child and Family Service Review (CFSR) Outcomes

2. Conflict Resolution

3. Partnership Trickledown

4. Safe Case Closure

Based on the statewide summit for private and public agency employees, each service area was asked to take the information learned and use it to further the partnering initiative locally. We'll follow the story of two individuals who did just that in the west side of the state. These mini-summits in the west side of the state continue to date.

Connie tells her story from a perspective of an Iowa Department of Human Services (public) representative. Jamie tells her story as someone from a provider (private) agency.

Family Team Meetings

Utilizing family team meetings has been a great way to come together to support a family. Uniting everyone is so beneficial, especially on a complicated case.

Family team meetings are a critical way to engage parents, attorneys and other stakeholders. However, through collaboration, we began holding them more often, evolving past the one-time-only engagement. When we held additional family meetings, we were able to engage “nontraditional” members in the meetings like people from the family’s church, school staff, friends and relatives.

Traditionally, cases started with a family team meeting, the assessment and case plan was written, and that was it for family meetings. As we get to know the families after the team meeting, we learn about more people who are influential in the lives of the families - people who can potentially make a significant impact in the success of the family. But we only find out about those individuals by blending the work and knowledge of everyone on the team.

We’ve also recognized that to reach our mutual goals, we have to step out of our comfort zone and break free of traditional roles. A common barrier has traditionally been client transportation, especially when it comes to resources. In the past we may have walked away from the issue because it was someone else’s responsibility. Now we look at these other people in the families’ personal network and seek out those individuals and identify how they can fill in that gap – a gap that can be so detrimental to the families’ success.


Jody

Partnership in Permanency: consistency and communication

This next series of posts gives some insight to partnership within Iowa's Family, Risk & Permanency services...

To public and private agency employees, partnership can be seen if you look into the core of a relationship. It’s how well you know the person on the other end.

The next series of blog posts will take you down the path of two supervisors involved with FSRP (Family Safety, Risk, and Permanency) services which are designed to provide support to families and connect them to resources when they’re involved in the child welfare system. The services help them manage self sufficiency and child safety. Jody is a supervisor on the public side and Heidi is a supervisor for a private agency. They have worked together on cases and seen the real benefits of partnership and collaboration.

Jody: The most obvious way we collaborate is consistent communication. Supervisors from both the public and private agencies meet on a regular basis to discuss how things are going. While that always seems like common sense in theory, the tricky part is to make it happen.

There are many sides to keeping each other up-to-date on a case that you are mutually responsible for. First of all, the start of a case is immediate and everyone has to mobilize in a quick timeframe. In the beginning, there is so much discovery involved, and it’s important to keep communication open so that we can decide the best strategies to meet the defined goals.

We literally come together to staff cases – it’s not just a matter of being assigned to the same case. Everyone has an equal voice when we talk about hurdles and what we can do about them. It’s all about being solution-focused. In the past there wasn’t a forum for clinical consultation, but working in the model of partnership, we come up with better solutions because of the inclusive working environment. We’ve gone from a crisis-driven mode to a collaborative mode, and our staff is doing their best work ever.

Not a perfect fit

To define our route, we first asked the question, “How are we doing today?” (Notice “we”). We pulled some data and looked at some individual cases. Focusing on practice alone, we said, “Our goal is to do better. Let’s do it.”

Reality was that we were doing well. But the goal is to do better, so we identified cases that just don’t “fit” typical case progression. Then we asked the question, “How do we deal with the cases that don’t “fit?”

“When a case doesn’t “fit,” what is the practice that supports the safety of the child and the family – that can keep the agency involved?” We looked at practice and practicality – if disincentives are used to manage outcomes, at what level can agencies sustain providing services?

The first concern is the safety of the child and family, so how do we define a manageable approach to these cases? Most important – what is a manageable approach that both private and public agencies can successfully work together on?

Another leg of the journey

The next collection of posts is a workgroup formed to address a specific issue. Evan represents the Iowa Dept. of Human Services and Doug represents a private agency.



First Things First

Another example of partnership in practice is the FSRP Safe & Timely Case Closure Workgroup.

Charged with a fast-track task, the team needed to perform an in-depth analysis of the current Family Safety Risk & Permanency (FSRP) contract configuration and recommend changes for the payment structure. The FSRP program is relatively new – it’s how we work with families that have documented abuse or neglect.

Key to our results was the decision to first take time to think through the best practices of keeping children safe. We realized we couldn’t talk about payments at all until we talked about how we work together so that we can jointly do the best job for Iowa’s kids and families.

Naturally, successful practice is first and foremost when we work in child welfare, but the public and private agencies had unique insight from their own perspectives. And that insight included what was going well…and what wasn’t.

Introducing a blog about…a journey.

A journey can take you many places you never dreamed you’d go. You can start at Point A, expecting to end at Point B, but you eventually discover Points C, D, J, and L were the most important legs of your journey.

In Iowa, we’ve embarked on a journey of partnership. We left behind our historical culture of separate entities working independently and are finding our way down a path of collaboration. With a shared destination guiding us, we are discovering how we can help each other find the best way. We are evolving beyond our roles and focusing instead on our shared outcomes.

Simply put, the journey is collaboration, communication and problem solving. It’s partnering with people around you. But it’s not always so easy to put into practice.

That’s why the Child Welfare Partners Committee (CWPC) was created. We all know we need to collaborate, but the day-to-day realities of our jobs can make collaboration a luxury.

In Iowa, families and children are a priority, so the Iowa Department of Human Services (DHS) and private human services agencies committed to create a unified approach to delivering child welfare services – the CWPC.

Two representatives from this committee – one from DHS and one from a private agency, will share their experiences of shared accountability, a commitment to collaboration and how it translates into better results for Iowa’s kids and families. Wendy and Chris will share what this partnership looks like as it blossoms into a fruitful environment for child welfare services.