Patricia Schene, PhD |
As Director of Children's Services for the
American Humane Association from 1954
to 1977, Vincent De Francis made enormous
contributions to the field of child protection.
Many of his early writings provide
the underlying foundation to child protection
as we know it today: both the fundamental
concept of "rescuing the family for
the child" and the philosophy that "child
protective services should be child-centered
and family-focused" originated with Mr.
De Francis. Thanks to his extraordinary
vision and talent, this lawyer by training and social
worker at heart transformed child protection from
a punitive to a preventive and rehabilitative model.
For more than 30 years, Patricia Schene has been working in the field of children
and family services: as a state administrator, private agency director, researcher,
and professor. Her work has involved national data system development, policy
formulation at the national and state levels, definition and measurement of
outcomes in child welfare, risk assessment, concurrent planning, curriculum development
to prepare staff and supervisors in public child protective services, the
building of community collaboratives to protect children, and the development
of systems of differential response to reports of child maltreatment. A leader of
many national forums addressing the response to child abuse and neglect in our
society, Dr. Schene contributed to the Child Welfare League of America standards
in child protective services, helped the American Public Human Services
Association develop an approach to integrate services across systems, and initiated
an effort to crosswalk statutes and standards in child welfare relevant to the
national Child and Family Services Reviews. She served as Director of Children's
Services for the last eight of her seventeen years with the American Humane
Association and, subsequently, as an independent consultant, has been helping
states to implement and evaluate differential response systems.
|
RSS
