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.
In the pre-planning phase of your policy work, you want to consider how you are going to maintain the mechanisms that you are creating beyond the current period. Naturally you will be looking to sustain the parts of your system of care work that have yielded positive results. It is thus very important to consider collecting information that justifies and supports why pieces of your emerging system of care are worth being put into policy.
Activities, Questions to Consider
Policy activities and tasks in your community might include:
- Reviewing other agencies’ policies and how they affect systems of care work, and how systems of care work will affect policies of other agencies.
- Have all relevant policies affecting the system of care been assessed?
- What are current policy barriers to building, implementing, or sustaining systems of care? How can those barriers be eliminated?
- Performing an environmental scan of system of care legislation nationally to see if there is any applicability to your State/tribe/community.
- Is there thorough understanding of the various kinds of policies that can support systems of care? If not, how will this understanding be developed?
- Have you done a web search of system of care policies?
- Identifying individuals and organizations key to identification, review, and analysis of existing policy.
- Has a stakeholder group been established to address existing policy issues? Does this group include elected officials and families involved in child welfare that have been impacted by current policies?
- Development of new or revised policies and procedures.
- Are there current policy gaps and/or barriers? What is the strategy to address them (e.g., develop new or revise existing policies)?
- Is there a mechanism within the governance structure to highlight and recommend policy issues and changes based on unresolved case plans?
- Does the system of care governance structure or another interagency committee have case plan review authority when a case plan cannot be implemented because of policy issues, service gaps, barriers, or funding problems?
Key Partners
The people who perform policy duties in your community might include:
- Interagency committee, including family representation
- Administrative support position
- System analyst
- Government relations staff
- Legislative staff
- Advocacy organization staff
- Legal counsel, as needed
- Evaluation staff
Sustainability
- As you begin implementing your system of care infrastructure, think about what policy mechanism you need to sustain the infrastructure you are building. For example, many States have codified in law State and local interagency teams, family involvement, definitions of target population within their system of care, required interagency case plans, and case management.
- Keep an eye out for those individuals who have a penchant for policy development and engage them in thinking about policy issues and development.
- Early in your system of care work, become familiar with existing system of care policies from around the country by doing a thorough web search.
Resources
Jefferson County, Colorado – House Bill 04-1451 Collaborative Management Program Legislation
These are the actual six pages of legislation that creates the statewide governance structure for Colorado’s system of care. It addresses county specific memorandum of understanding to be developed that includes an interagency oversight group, individualized care teams and plans, development of performance-based measures, performance-based incentive funds distribution, and annual reporting to county executive directors and the State.
Contra Costa County, California – Policy Council Governance Document (PDF - 87 KB)
This four-page document outlines the vision/purpose/principles/membership/committee structure of the System of Care Planning and Policy Council. Embedded within this document are clear statements of how policy issues will be addressed along with specific committees assigned to review and revise existing policies related to their system of care.
Jefferson County, Colorado – Information Sharing Policy (PDF - 2.3 MB)
This five-page policy concerning cross-agency information sharing is a supportive document for working with children and their families who are involved with multiple public agencies. This policy is intended to clarify the circumstances under which employees may disclose information regarding their customers to other employees of the Jefferson County Department of Human Services.
Alamance County, North Carolina – Release of Information Form (PDF - 122 KB)
This one-page document gives authorization to release and exchange information within the system of care. It is signed by the parent/guardian and the service provider. All participating agencies are listed on the form and can be checked off as appropriate to the child and family concerned.
In the planning phase of policy work, you want to decide what systems of care mechanisms– i.e. interagency administrative and planning teams, individualized plans of care–require which specific types of policy development to sustain their lifespan. Putting in place a robust continuous quality improvement program will help inform your system of care and which aspects of your system of care have shown value and are worthy of policy support. The policy options are many, from an interagency agreement, memorandum of understanding/ memorandum of agreement to legislation. Finding the appropriate policy instrument will be important to help move your system of care to the next level of sustainability.
Activities, Questions to Consider
Policy activities and tasks in your community might include:
- Establish Memoranda of Understanding/Memoranda of Agreement
- Is your memorandum of understanding, interagency agreement or memorandum of agreement for a period of over a year? If so, how are you able to forecast beyond a year’s time what conditions will be related to your agreement?
- Conduct cross-agency policy analysis.
- Identify licensure (credentials) required of service providers to determine if they need to be revised. For example, foster care, group, other residential facilities, individuals, and agencies that serve children, youth and families in the child welfare system all have licensure requirements that may present barriers or that need to be updated.
- Examine intra-organizational policies, procedures, and practices (e.g., tools, samples, lessons learned) to see if they are adequate within your emerging system of care.
- Identify policies that impede implementation (confidentiality, data sharing, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, out-of-community placement costs borne by the State).
- Do policies of one participating agency conflict with those of another participating agency? What strategy can address the conflict?
- Have you made connections with the legislative branch of government in order to have knowledgeable allies who can carry your policy recommendations forward in the legislature?
- Have you examined Program Improvement Plans, Child and Family Services Reviews, State Improvement Plans and other agency plans to make sure they do not conflict?
- Are you in contact with the State Program Improvement Plan coordinator?
- Have you been able to infuse your system of care principles and practices into the State Program Improvement Plan?
- Determine methods for utilizing data and outcomes, including Child and Family Services Reviews data, to inform policy development.
- Are you engaging your evaluation team in the policy development process?
- Are you balancing family stories along with data to show the benefits of your system of care?
Key Partners
The people who perform policy duties in your community might include:
- Interagency committee including family representation
- Administrative support position
- System analyst
- Government relations staff
- Legislative staff
- Advocacy organization staff
- Legal counsel, as needed
- Evaluation staff
Sustainability
- Interagency agreements/memoranda of understanding should not extend for more than one year, and should be renewed annually. This protects you from an agreement that is not working and also ensures that as times change the agreement will reflect the changes that are happening.
- Be as specific as you can be in any agreement as it will dictate the rules of engagement and lessen the chance of miscommunication between the parties involved.
- Ensure that all key stakeholders are involved in drafting agreements and are endorsed by their respective agencies so that you have support of the agencies behind the individuals.
- If your policy activity requires legislation, make sure you have developed ongoing relationships with key senate and house members who can sponsor the bill in both chambers of the legislature.
Resources
Contra Costa County, California – Planning and Policy Council (PDF - 73 KB)
This six-page memorandum of understanding outlines the organization, philosophy, target population, shared client information system, sustainability/resource development, service objectives and term of agreement for the System of Care Planning and Policy Council.
Contra Costa County, California – Permanency Definition (PDF - 56 KB)
This is a one-page definition of Permanency that was used within the Contra County System of Care initiative.
Alamance County, North Carolina – Memorandum of Understanding (PDF - 32 KB)
This is a four-page memorandum of agreement that defines how various public and private nonprofit agencies will work together to build a system of care for children and families. Areas included in the agreement are: Purpose of Agreement, Core Values, Guiding Principles, Implementation of Agreement, Scope of Agreement and Signature Page.
New York – Private Provider MOU (PDF - 20 KB)
This two-page memorandum of understanding briefly outlines the relationship with a nonprofit organization and the city’s child welfare agency and its emerging system of care. Areas addressed include: membership in system of care steering committee, information sharing, availability of training and technical assistance and involvement in evaluation activities. Also, the nonprofit agency agrees to train parent leaders with a prescribed curriculum as part of the agreement.
The implementation phase is marked by carefully developing the policy mechanism or mechanisms you have chosen to pursue. A key point in this phase is making sure that you keep the integrity of the original idea intact, whether it is administrative, legislative or procedural policy, as the policy is being developed and modified. It is very possible as drafts of your policy are reviewed and amended to lose the original intent of the policy as it was first conceived. It will be important to keep a close eye out for modifications that take you away from your original meaning. This can be particularly important if you have chosen to pursue legislation to sustain your system of care. The legislative process can at times call for the kinds of modifications that could redirect your system of care to something with which you would not be satisfied. At that point it becomes important to review and comment on the impact of proposed changes and even consider removing support for legislation that would not be in the best interest of your system of care. Another form of policy might then be necessary to keep the integrity of your work, such as an interagency agreement or memorandum of understanding between your systems of care partners.
Activities, Questions to Consider
Policy activities and tasks in your community might include:
- Developing executive orders, legislation, statutes, and proclamations.
- Modifying interagency regulations and policies.
- Creating/promoting policies that reallocate funding from out-of-home placement to community-based in-home services.
- Is there emphasis on offering community-based services and reducing out-of-home placements?
- Establishing requests for proposals and contracts with consultants and service providers that reflect systems of care principles.
- Continuously assessing the impact of new legislation and funding on systems of care development, implementation, and sustainability.
Key Partners
The people who perform policy duties in your community might include:
- Interagency committee including family representation
- Administrative support position
- System analyst
- Government relations staff
- Legislative staff
- Advocacy organization staff
- Legal counsel, as needed
- Evaluation staff
Sustainability
- Collect data on every aspect of your system of care process so you can develop policies to support your work. Examples to consider include: percentage of children and youth being served who have blended funding strategies; number of children and youth who were prevented from an out-of-home placement; number of children and youth who were served in their community versus an out-of-county or out-of-State placement (make sure you also have data on their safety, permanency and well-being while in placement); cost data on serving children and youth in community-based placement versus out-of-community placements.
- Make sure you have a robust communications campaign to tell the story of your system of care outcomes.
- Create forums so that people who have been involved in your system of care can talk about their experiences.
- Create provider groups so they can articulate the strengths and challenges in providing services and make recommendations as to the next policy changes that need to occur so they work at an optimum level.
Resources
Jefferson County, Colorado – Interagency Oversight Bylaws (PDF - 35 KB)
This six-page document helps define how the governance structure, called the Interagency Oversight Group, carries out its business. Sections in the by-laws include: mission, purpose, membership, officers, meetings, fiscal, sub-committees, conflicts of interest and amendments.
Kansas – Family Engagement Reimbursement Plan (PDF - 23 KB)
This is a two-page set of guidelines that address the financial reimbursement for youth and families involved in system of care related committees, councils and/or workgroups.
Collecting information on all aspects of your system of care work is critical in developing, maintaining, growing, and sustaining your system of care. In order for you to justify why a part of your system of care should be formalized as a new policy you will need data to gain support for the policy action. Also, as you continue to implement your system of care, it is critical that you engage in a continuous quality improvement program. These efforts to refine and improve your system of care rely on a thoughtful strategy for the collection, synthesis, and reporting of data related to your system of care. An ongoing continuous quality improvement program is a valuable asset for your system of care. It ensures that most, if not all, of the data will be accessible for reporting to funders and applying for additional funding. Continuous Quality Improvement programs help guide decisions about how to make the best use of your resources. It also provides information on service utilization and service populations that can help your system of care survive challenging economic times. Including all of your partners in this process will strengthen your efforts. For example, the consumer perspective on why one service is more popular than another may be very different from the evaluator’s perspective. There really is never a time when you can suspend data collecting and reporting — unless you want your system of care to suspend its activities.
Activities, Questions to Consider
Policy activities and tasks in your community might include:
- Having evaluators participate in the development of new policies for your system of care.
- Evaluators can help systems of care partners develop models to explicate the importance of the proposed policy.
- Policies should include identification of purpose, target population, required resources, intended activities, expected results, and measurable outcomes.
- Analyzing current policies to see if they are supporting the identified outcomes of your system of care.
- Assuring that any new policy developed has a set of outcome measures built in from the beginning to track the efficacy of the policy as it relates to your community-based system of care.
- Not all policy/program goals are readily measurable.
- Consideration of desired short, intermediate and long-terms goals for the policy or program should help to identify a group of readily measurable indicators.
- Careful consideration should be given as to whether the selected outcome measures are likely to be affected by the policy/program changes.
- For example, permanency is a primary goal for child welfare agencies. Cross-system collaborations among child welfare, education, and mental health may well improve permanency over time, but these improvements are unlikely to be measurable in the first six months of implementation. During the first six months, the measurable process outcomes might be the number of participating agencies, the number of memoranda of understanding, and the number of consumer participants. The more closely the outcomes are tied to the actual change or refinement, the more useful the information they yield.
- Creating mechanisms that ensure that front line staff are involved in planning, implementation, and data collection.
- Line staff will provide better data if the data are useful to them or if they are included in the evaluation process.
- Line staff may have more practical ideas for improving performance as new programs and/or strategies are implemented.
- Line staff are likely to have more information about how consumers are responding to new policies and programs.
- Synthesizing and presenting data based on the results of policy related to your system of care.
- Care should be taken to present the findings, conclusions and recommendations in direct and straightforward language to encourage wider participation in the continuous quality improvement process.
- The presentation of data trends (data points plotted over a period of time) can be useful in understanding the impact of quality improvement strategies.
- The preparation of performance presentations for stakeholders and funders can position your system of care to be prepared and flexible when new partnerships and funding opportunities appear.
- Communicating results on a recurring and frequent basis to all levels of the agency, from front line workers to supervisors to administrators is most important.
- The integration of data into day-to-day operations will result in data becoming a natural part of program planning and implementation.
- Decisions about future activities will be guided by the overarching question of, “What do we already know about [insert problem] based on the data?”
Key Partners
The people who perform policy duties in your community might include:
- Interagency committee including family representation
- Administrative support position
- System analyst
- Government relations staff
- Legislative staff
- Advocacy organization staff
- Legal counsel, as needed
- Evaluation staff
Sustainability
- Create a culture within your system of care that values the inclusion of data collection, data synthesis, and reporting in your system of care.
- Begin your planning process with outcome data related to your target population and your policy/program objectives.
- Use the data to identify population of focus or programs.
- Carefully analyze the likelihood of whether the proposed policy/program will improve outcomes for your population of focus.
- Not all of your ideas will produce your desired outcomes. When this happens, you can either consider different outcomes or you can seek a different approach to generate your desired outcomes.
- Assure that your evaluation staff are partners in all activities within your system of care.
- Evaluators can help your stakeholders/partners translate your short, intermediate and long-term expectations into measurable outcomes.
- It will be much easier for your evaluators to provide you with the data and reports you need if they are active participants in your planning and continuous quality improvement activities.
- Build in data reporting mechanisms to all stakeholder groups.
- Provide data updates for stakeholders in settings designed to solicit stakeholder questions and feedback.
- Engage stakeholders in discussions about whether policies and programs are working well to support continuous quality improvement strategies. Remember that stakeholders are also experts in your system of care.
- Infuse data reporting as part of all policies that are developed for your system of care.
- Including evaluation or quality control in your policy or program design from the beginning helps sustain the questions of “What are the expected results?” and “How can we measure them?” as active components of the planning process.
- If you are having trouble identifying a way to measure the impact of your policy or program, you may want to refer to one of the logic model approaches listed below for ideas.
Resources
Child Welfare Information Gateway, Evaluation Toolkit and Logic Model Builder
FRIENDS National Resource Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention, Evaluation Toolkit
University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension Program Development and Evaluation
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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.