Policy

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Example from
the Field

Definition

Policy is defined as a plan or course of action, as of a government, political party, or business, intended to influence and determine decisions, actions, and other matters (Pickett, 2000). Policies can be Federal, State, tribal, local or agency-specific legislation, mandates, rules, or regulatory requirements. Policies formalize practice and can be interagency agreements, Memorandums of Understanding/Memorandums of Agreements or agency-specific agreements for personnel, fiscal issues, administration, or programs. In a system of care, policy supports and sustains the efforts of interagency partners and community stakeholders responsible for the safety, permanency, and well-being of children, youth, and families.

Why Use a Policy Toolkit?

Perhaps no other infrastructure mechanism addresses the issue of sustainability more directly than developing policy. The options for the kind of policy you develop are numerous and depend on what you are trying to achieve. It is important to take your time with policy development work in your system of care and tease out what aspects of your system need and/or require policy development to be sustained. The next step is to choose the policy vehicle you will need to use. This toolkit will help you make that decision. You will see examples of legislation, memorandums of understanding and interagency agreements, as well as other policy possibilities, embedded in this toolkit. You will also be exposed to the words of those who have already developed policy and some of the lessons learned in how to approach the work of policy development. Many speak to the need to have patience and develop meaningful relationships with your interagency partners before you embark on developing policy. This toolkit will be of great value in helping you forge policy to sustain your system of care work.

Glossary of Policy Terms

Interagency Agreement (Early Stage Policy)
– Defines who, what, where, how and why we are going to work together. It is recommended that early agreements be for short periods (3 to 6 months) of time so that trust in the process can be built up without a huge commitment of time. No interagency agreement should be for more than one year. There are too many changes in a twelve-month period of time to commit to a longer time period. Agreements need to be developed by representatives of the future partners that will carry out the agreement. Finally, interagency agreements can be the beginning of developing trust among partners.

Memorandum of Understanding (Mid Stage Policy)
– A legal document outlining the terms and details of an agreement between parties, including each party’s requirements and responsibilities.
– The Memorandum of Understanding is often the first stage in the formation of a formal contract. A memorandum of understanding is far more formal than a handshake and is given weight in a court of law should one party fail to meet the obligations of the memorandum.

Statute (Mid to Late Stage Policy)
– A statute is a law enacted by a legislature. It requires a team of people drafting legislation, including advocacy groups. A statute has the ability to lend staying power to work that you have begun as “ad hoc.” The statute will need legislative sponsors and those able to speak on its behalf and watchdog the process. In putting forth a proposed statute you need to be sure you end up with what you originally drafted. The legislative process can bring changes in statutes in an effort to compromise which may alter the original intent of the legislation. Once passed you needs to make sure that the spirit and intent of the legislation is upheld.

Appropriations (Follows passage of Statute)
– The second aspect of law. Many laws are passed with little or no funding attached making the law not much more than a symbolic gesture by the legislature. Much advocacy and education goes into this part of the legislative process. Data is very helpful to give reason for investing in statute. The parent voice is also very powerful in this arena.

Regulations and Procedures (Follows passage of Statute and Appropriation of funds made)
– Regulations and procedures are ways to operationalize a statute. It makes the process behind the law clear and available to all concerned. At the Federal level it could be a grant announcement, rules, and regulations of an entitlement (Child Welfare, Medicaid, Social Security).

Proclamations (Anytime)
– Offered by Governors, Tribal Chiefs, County Executives, Mayors and Presidents. Although most often symbolic in nature, proclamations can be a way to raise awareness. At times, they can actually transform government and society (e.g., Emancipation Proclamation, Children’s Cabinet).

Resolutions (Anytime)
– A formal statement to carry out policy and administrative functions passed and adopted by a municipality. For example, a city might pass a resolution for Kids Day.

Systems of Care Principles and Values

The following are just a few ways systems of care principles and values might be evident in policy in your community:

• Policy development is guided by desired results and outcomes.
• Policy maximizes family involvement.
• Policy alignment and involvement of all child-serving agencies is required, including child welfare, education, juvenile justice, behavioral health, mental health, primary health, and substance abuse treatment, as well as representatives of the systems of care population of focus.
• Policies address the cultural, ethnic, and linguistic needs of the population of focus as well as the training and necessary supports required to ensure a culturally competent and diverse staff working with children and families.
• Policies support community-based services.
• Strategic planning document.
• Outcome measures and performance expectations are specified in the strategic planning document, as is the method for collecting baseline and comparison data.

Goals

• Policies of child- and family-serving agencies are aligned with systems of care principles ranging from funding to conducting business and providing services.
• Policies promote interagency governance and service coordination approaches to address the safety, permanency, and well-being of children, youth, and families.
• Policies promote home-based practice strategies to improve outcomes for children, youth, and families.
• Policies support the application of interagency and intra-agency processes for measuring, analyzing, and monitoring outcomes.
• Policies support the application of evidence-based and promising practices, data and results-driven decision-making processes within agencies involved in systems of care.
• Policies support interagency and family involved community-based systems of care that will work in conjunction to support children, youth, and families.

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Example from the Field

Site

Contra Costa County, California

Goal

The goal of the agency was to integrate family participation at all levels of the organization and its service delivery in pursuit of a growing culture of strengths-based practice. It was recognized that involving family members as staff has helped outreach to families entering the system, yet it was still difficult to consistently engage families who are court-ordered into the system. Nonetheless, the culture of the organization is slowly changing, as is its perception in the community.

Strategy/Approach

What Was Done

At the governance level, the site included two family members and several youth representatives as participating members on its interagency policy council. At the service delivery level, two family members were hired in full-time positions. Several part-time positions were added to help families involved with child welfare navigate the system, understand, and maximize their roles and responsibilities in the Team Decision-Making meetings, and find the resources necessary for their success. At the procedural level, family members participated in co-training of all new staff in order to integrate family involvement and a strengths-based orientation at all levels of the organization. Parent Partners advocated for the needs and interests of families and helped the agency ensure that its redesign was as family-centered and strengths-based as possible.

Who Was Involved?

Family involvement was integrated into all levels of the child welfare redesign effort, including policy, governance, procedure, supervision of staff, and practice or service delivery. Every effort was made to integrate the value of family involvement in the organization by having active participation of family members at all levels. Agency leadership initiated the action, while supervisors, line staff, and partners from other agencies supported it. There was a significant impact on other public agency partners as they experienced Parent Partners in joint meetings, from policy to service delivery. Child welfare’s efforts have encouraged a cultural change across the county. The county’s high visibility in the State made this shift in values, policy, and practices a potential catalyst for statewide change. Finding Parent Partners willing to work inside the agency was no small feat and took courage on the part of the parents to initiate a new role in a system that had previously exerted considerable control over their lives.

Time Frame

Family members began their work in July 2005. Child Welfare built upon the work of Parent Partners in the mental health system to further demonstrate the value and impact of family involvement across all publicly funded agencies. For example, caseworkers began to see the value of Parent Partners in resource development, problem solving, and program success through Team Decision-Making meeting participation. The work required ongoing training of all hired staff, as well as constant consideration of roles and responsibilities, as the agency continued its redesign and adjusted to social, cultural, fiscal, and political needs across time.

Why This Approach Was Selected

A role for family members pre-dated this grant due to previous systems of care implementation and was supported as the county’s systems of care development effort shifted its leadership from the mental health system to the child welfare system. The impetus for this action was the grant itself and its requirements, but the values and belief in family involvement were already present in the county and thus were expanded.

Systems of Care Principles

Family involvement as a foundation of a system of care provided the motivation to move from a theoretical belief in family involvement to a practical implementation through employment of family members and their integration into all levels of the system. The idea of providing co-professional/family member training for all staff helped bring the concept of family involvement into reality for staff at all levels. Building on previous systems of care work among publicly funded agencies through its existing Policy Council, the child welfare system opened the door to broader consideration of relevant stakeholders for the Policy Council, such as the faith community and service providers. This further expanded the community’s understanding of the pivotal role and importance of family involvement to achieve their collective goals for community improvement.

Lessons Learned

Facilitators

Parent Partners add an exciting new dimension to the work of child welfare in a number of ways. As parent leaders, parents offer a unique insight and perspective relative to the work. They express, from the parents’ point of view, what works well and what does not. They point out areas that need attention, and alert the child welfare field to barriers to family engagement. As parent advocates, they have an unsurpassed ability to empathize with the families with whom they work. Their very presence offers hope. They can say to a family in crisis, “I know what you are going through, but you can do it. I did and you can too. Let me show you how.” One of the lessons learned is how powerful that sentiment can be to the recipient.

Parent Partners also challenge the child welfare field to “think outside the box.” It is easy to forget there may be alternative ways of doing something. Parent Partners are extremely helpful to casework staff in that they are well connected with the community and its resources. Parent Partners can take the time to help families with everything from getting on a waitlist for services to learning how to manage their time through the use of a calendar. They can attend AA and domestic violence meetings with parents who are reluctant to go alone and need moral support. They can show parents how to use public transportation. They also remind us to be culturally sensitive to the families with whom we work.

The Parent Partners are also ambassadors for other parents, dispelling the “them and us attitude” that is sometimes found in the child welfare field. When staff get to know the Parent Partners, they begin to realize the parents they are working with (and perhaps frustrated by) may have the same potential as the Parent Partners. In this way, the Parent Partners give staff hope as well.

Barriers

Involving parents was not without challenges. Having parents at a meeting in the office made some staff uncomfortable. They felt that they would not be able to speak as freely, or that the Parent Partners would automatically side with the parents at meetings. The issues of workplace bias were addressed swiftly and directly. The most effective way of dealing with workplace bias was a clear message from administration that they will be inviting parents to be full participants in the process, and administration invited staff and community partners to welcome the parents to the work. They developed a comprehensive Professional Development Plan for the Parent Partners to familiarize them with looking at child welfare through a different lens, and preparing them for meeting professional expectations in the workplace: meetings, speaking engagements, court, Team Decision-Making meetings, and television and newspaper interviews. These experiences presented the Parent Partners with unique opportunities to affect families, the child welfare system, the courts, and the community.

Change is always difficult, and resistance to change was found to be a problem. Although the agency was looking for different outcomes through the use of Parent Partners, staff sometimes found it difficult to accept that they would have to do things differently in order to get the desired results. Parent Partners made staff rethink their approaches to case planning and problem solving. Partnering with parents challenged us in unexpected ways, and as we grappled with these issues the culture of the agency began to change.

Next Steps

The model in Contra Costa County has both full-time and part-time Parent Partners. They have been able to get suitable nominees for part-time Parent Partners and train them, but once their training is complete, a large percentage of trainees fail to stick with the program. Contra Costa County has begun to evaluate the reasons for this, and has decided to expand the mentoring model to include the new Parent Partners. This will give the Parent Partners enhanced shadowing experiences and greater responsibility earlier on in the process. Each of the experienced Parent Partners will take responsibility for one or more of the trainees and give them additional one-on-one support with the goal of increasing the program’s retention rate.

Acknowledgements

The National Technical Assistance and Evaluation Center for Systems of Care would like to thank the numerous individuals whose hard work and dedication made this toolkit a possibility. Thank you to the Children’s Bureau staff, specifically Bethany Miller and Pamela Johnson (retired), Federal Project Officers, for their guidance and support throughout the writing and editing process. A special thank you goes to the following people for graciously volunteering to be interviewed for the Voices from the Field Section of the toolkit: Rich Weisgal, Contra Costa County, California; Beth Evans, Children & Family Services Administrator, Kansas; and Fred Wulczyn, Chapin Hall Center for Children, New York. Many thanks to the representatives from the nine Systems of Care grant communities of the Improving Child Welfare Outcomes through Systems of Care demonstration initiative who willingly shared sample products and tools which have been highlighted in the Resources Section. Finally, we thank the members of Infrastructure Toolkit Workgroup, who all brought their expertise to the table:

• Susan Franklin, Program Manager, Jefferson County, Colorado, Department of Human Services
• Beth Evans, Children and Family Services Administrator, Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services
• Angela Braxton, Parent Leader, Kansas
• Peggy Taylor, Evaluator, Kansas
• Angela Mendell, Casework Supervisor, Bladen County, North Carolina
• Marie Parrott-Withers, Parent/Provider, North Carolina
• Helen Spence, System of Care Outreach Coordinator, Foster/Adoptive Parent
• Ervin Talley, Community Member, Bedford-Stuyvesant, New York City, New York
• Kamelia No Moccasin, Oglala Lakota Tribe
• Paula Loud Hawk (deceased), Caseworker, Lakota Oyate Wakanyeja Owicakiya Pi Okolakiciye (Helping Children of the Lakota People)
• Nicole Bossard, Technical Assistance Team Leader, National Technical Assistance and Evaluation Center
• Gary De Carolis (Chair), Senior Consultant, National Technical Assistance and Evaluation Center
• Elleen Deck, Technical Assistance Liaison, National Technical Assistance and Evaluation Center
• Janet Griffith, Senior Fellow, National Technical Assistance and Evaluation Center
• Ethleen Iron Cloud Two Dogs, Technical Assistance Liaison, National Technical Assistance and Evaluation Center
• Caitlin Murphy, Analyst, National Technical Assistance and Evaluation Center

References

Pickett, J., et al. (Eds.). (2000). American heritage dictionary of the English language (4th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.