A different kind of conversation

It’s easy to point the finger and tell others what they’re doing wrong, but not as easy to talk in front of everyone about what you’re doing wrong. One of our team members was instrumental in setting the tone for the team’s success. She talked about reviewing hundreds of cases and finding where her own staff struggled to meet expected outcomes. In front of all of us, she said the framework just wasn’t working. She said, “I need to figure out with you how to make this work.”

A few simple words that changed the conversation.

We decided to define the end at the beginning; start with the end in mind. How do we define “safe case closure?” And the result was rich conversation that focused on the work we share.

Once the trust and relationship is there, things just start happening. Instead of protecting who is “right” or “wrong” everyone’s energy is spent on innovation, problem solving and the future.

Let’s not talk about money…let’s talk about what we want to achieve.

Historically public and private agencies walked into meetings in our perceived roles: the state has a regulatory/compliance role and the private agency has the responsibility to fulfill a contract. Deciding that our first meeting would center around what we want to achieve and our shared responsibility to achieve a common objective kept us focused on what was important. By concentrating on the best way to keep kids safe, we were able to see how our roles compliment each other

When we prepared for the first meeting of the task force, we agreed: Let’s not talk about money – let’s talk about what we want to achieve.

Fortunately we both agreed this was the best approach for our first meeting. When we all came together for the first time - focused on the objective – something remarkable happened. We started out talking about the practice of keeping kids safe. That’s what we’re all about. That’s what we know.

In the room were two Chief Executive Officers of human service agencies, a program manager and two levels of DHS administrative personnel. The total years of experience in human services in that room tipped the scales, and we started our task of defining a pay structure by talking about best practice in keeping kids safe.

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.

Right – we had this great experience with finding out the best way to train staff and families on Family Interaction, and then it turned into other opportunities. We took the training and built it into DHS internal new worker training. Everyone was so excited about the success of the training, and the inclusive atmosphere, that we started thinking how this could translate into other areas.

We have these monthly meetings about contracts with providers (private agencies) and we try to problem solve. Well, after the Family Interaction trainings we thought, “A-ha!” and realized providers should be in on those meetings, too! Public and private agencies have the same goal: child safety, permanency and well-being. We have different experiences and different observations that can help us achieve that goal. Together.

It’s really spilled over into what we do every day. And that’s the whole purpose, right?

Wendy

Family Interaction

When you perform work under a contract, your client tells you what you need to do and, often, how to do it. When DHS decided Family Interaction was important to keep Iowa’s kids safe, it became something that agencies needed to do. But they asked the private side to help figure out how to do it. Not literally – not how you write a family interaction plan - but how we all implement a new practice as a standard.

This was one of our first projects to test the collaborative process. We assembled our best champions of the practice – from public and private agencies, from our families, and other advocates. We used phone calls, meetings, trial trainings and geographical considerations to adjust the curriculum to fit Iowa’s needs and customized the training to fit the needs of different service areas.

What we did was involve several stakeholders in the process. What we saw was the voices of many gives us a bigger picture and a better solution.

When we held regional trainings, you should have seen the trainers – they were excited to teach, and the attendees could feel it. Sometimes training can be a bit tiring, but you could feel the energy at these trainings. (Chris)

For example...

There is a practice called Family Interaction that helps parents whose children are in foster care learn from foster families. It’s proven effective and nationally recognized as something that helps birth parents create a safe home for the child(ren) to return to.

We knew it was something great, but we needed to figure out how to communicate how it works and why we believe in it. We needed to explain it to birth families, to foster families, to agency employees and to court officials. So in this new partnership approach, guess what we did?

We asked people that already recognized the value to help us spread the word to their peers. No preset ideas. No training as usual. We wanted out of the box. And guess what? When we asked, we got it!

Chris and I took on Family Interaction together, and we started with our agencies. What did our staff know? Who did our staff know that already practiced Family Interaction? What did families think of it? What was practical and what was not?

Wendy

Private Agencies

I’m up for talking – in human services, it’s what we do. What will be strange is talking in this format.

But I can do this, because I’ve been a part of the committee and it’s been great work. From a private agency viewpoint, this partnership gives us the opportunity to become part of an incredible journey that will create a new culture in child welfare. Public and private agencies have been working together for many years, but building a formal partnership that commits stakeholders to something that will benefit everyone in the end – that’s just good practice.

I’ll be talking about the work we’ve done and the work we’ll keep doing. And I can’t wait to see what turns we take along the way!

-Chris