This article originally appeared in the March-April 2000 issue of the Children's Advocate newsmagazine, published by Action Alliance for Children.

New approaches to protecting kids

A new generation of reform is emerging in child welfare systems across the country

By Jean Tepperman

A young mother charged with "medical neglect" of her children was about to meet with child protection workers. Before the meeting, Paul Vincent, then Alabama director of child welfare, asked social workers to list the mother's strengths. They said they couldn't think of any—she was withdrawn, passive, uninvolved with her children.

The usual child-protection approach, says Vincent, would have been to give the parent a warning and refer her to parenting classes. But when they met with the mother, social workers tried a new approach—they started the meeting by helping her list her family's strengths. When it was time to make a plan to improve family functioning, they started by asking the mother what she needed.

With much encouragement, the mother revealed several important strengths: her desire to be a good mother, her attachment to her children, her desire to return to college and become a child care teacher, a partner who worked two jobs and contributed financial support, her family in a nearby state. With the respect and sympathy of the staff, the mother then felt able to reveal some important underlying needs—including help with her daily epileptic seizures, adult companionship, and support in reuniting with her own mother, who she worried "doesn't love me."

Social workers then helped devise some creative solutions that strengthened the family and reconnected the mother with her relatives—so that later, when she had to go to the hospital, the family cared for the children and they didn't have to go into foster care.

Paul Vincent, who led Alabama's child welfare system through a bottom-to-top reform in the wake of a 1991 legal settlement, tells this story to illustrate his department's new approach to working with parents accused of neglecting or abusing their children.

State and local child welfare departments across the country are experimenting with new approaches "because the approaches we've been using haven't been protecting kids," says Mary Lee Allen, child welfare director for the Children's Defense Fund. "There's been a litany of reports to legislators and lawsuits," she says, showing that more and more abused and neglected children are entering overburdened and inadequate child welfare systems.

The most promising new approaches are based on two broad principles:

Engaging families as partners rather than adversaries

• Families participate in making plans based on their strengths. Instead of first listing problems or accusations, a "strengths-based" approach emphasizes what families have going for them and gives families a voice (see Families Gathering: At "family decision meetings," family and friends work out solutions for troubled families).
• Plans are based on a family's needs, not on the available services. Parents who have been reported for neglect or abuse are often simply given referrals to parenting classes or other standard programs. But if an "overwhelmed mother" leaves her kids alone, she may have underlying needs—for respite, for treatment of her depression, for protection from domestic violence—that parenting classes won't meet.

Creating community-based networks of support

• Family meetings include community service providers as well as family members and child welfare workers—whoever might be "part of the solution"—to develop plans to improve family functioning (see Families Gathering).
• "Community networks for child protection" are created by child protective services (CPS) workers stationed in schools or community centers working with community organizations and informal supports (see Networks of support: Community Partnerships for Protecting Children weave stronger community ties to help troubled families).
• Neighborhood-based foster care keeps children close to home and trains foster parents to work with birth parents (see Fostering community: With the Family to Family program, foster children stay close to home and their parents gain mentors).
• CPS departments form partnerships with substance-abuse-treatment programs, family resource centers, and local churches or businesses to improve support for families.
• Some CPS workers campaign for housing assistance, antipoverty programs, or improved education for children with special needs as part of their commitment to support families.

These approaches are new and not yet widely implemented. Already, though, there is promising evidence of success. In Alabama counties, for example, in the first five years of system reform, there was a significant drop—up to 40 percent—in the number of children removed from their parents, says Vincent. Those who did end up in foster care experienced significantly shorter stays.

What needs to happen

Experts identified several supports that are necessary to transform the practice of child welfare, but all agreed the most important is changing the attitudes and skills of people who work directly with families and of their supervisors—changing "the culture of practice," in Vincent's words. That means:

• Training: Meaningful change, says Vincent, requires "a heavy investment in skill-based training to do an individualized, strengths-based process," such as the eight-week curriculum used in Alabama, a combination of classroom instruction and field work. At first, Vincent says, child welfare workers say they're already doing individual service plans based on client needs. But "when people see the strengths in families and see business being done in a different way without compromising child safety, they get it," says Allen.
• Changes in child welfare departments: The biggest change, says Vincent, is shifting control over funds to the individual case worker so he or she can spend available funds on a greater range of supports—music lessons, for example, or a weight-loss program, or in-home behavior coaching. In addition, state policies can direct counties to give more priority to families, by requiring family visits for foster kids and family involvement in case planning.
• Skills in "cultural competence" are also essential, says Linda Spears, director for child protection of the Child Welfare League of America. Spears has helped the child welfare department in Montgomery County, Maryland do a rigorous self-assessment to help CPS workers build cultural awareness into the way they understand and work with families.
• Feedback from families served has also been important in Montgomery County, says Spears. The department has surveyed parents, foster parents, and adoptive parents about their experiences with CPS. It also convenes family focus groups and works with parent groups in the community to get suggestions on how to work more effectively with families.
• A shift of funds to early intervention is also necessary, says Allen. There's "open-ended federal funding" for out-of-home placement, she points out. "We need to maintain that entitlement" but also shift resources "to the front end." Recent changes in federal and state law allow counties to use some foster care funds for "wraparound" services to families while children are still at home.

"Money is not the problem," said Ira Burnim of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, at a recent meeting of child welfare advocates. "Child welfare systems already spend more money on ineffective and unnecessary residential treatment than they would need to provide appropriate and less restrictive services."

Besides, Allen says, "If you send these families away, they'll come right back to your door later on. If we can connect families to community services, it will probably prove to be cost effective."