I believe in striving for excellence and setting the bar high, particularly when the stakes are high. When charged with protecting the safety and welfare of children, the stakes couldn’t be higher. That is why employees of the Division of Family and Children Services often hear me say our goal is to provide the best child welfare and family independence services in the world.
Ambitious? Certainly. But I clearly see how we can get there.
DFCS’s “Blueprint for Change” outlines high-level, interdependent changes that will put us on the path toward achieving our goal. As we develop specific actions, I believe conventional wisdom will shift toward one of great confidence in our ability to accomplish real change and to achieve measurable outcomes to the benefit of Georgia’s children and families.
The plan incorporates recommendations of the Child Welfare Reform Council created by Gov. Nathan Deal to address challenges facing the child-welfare system in the categories of safety, permanency and well-being.
The most important aspect is to develop a robust workforce supported by best practices for caseloads, with resources to help people do their jobs effectively and safely.
We are working toward a child welfare caseload ratio of 1:15, consistent with the Reform Council’s recommendation. This will bolster our ability to assess the safety of children who come to our attention. We are already making progress reducing caseloads and the number of pending investigations even with unprecedented increases in the number of Child Protective Services reports.
We have added nearly 275 new staff in the past year and continue to hire. Adequate staffing gives us the capacity to effectively serve the one in five Georgians who count on our assistance to care for their families.
With Georgia Tech, we are developing a high technology “panic button” to help keep staff members safe as they visit families in their homes, many times at night and alone. We are also enhancing systems we use to track and monitor cases.
Additionally, we will improve supervisory practices to ensure we are mentoring those who may not have adequate experience in the field. Classroom training alone doesn’t suffice. As a former caseworker, I can attest to the importance of a good mentor to impart wisdom when dealing with the pressures and unpredictable situations DFCS investigators face.
We acknowledge not all of our tasks can be undertaken in a purely prescriptive manner, and that much of our success depends on the professional judgment of our caseworkers and their supervisors. To improve outcomes, supervisors should help caseworkers develop judgment skills to supplement their training on policies and procedures.
It is vital that we identify, adopt and adhere to a proven-practice model that recognizes the connectedness and interdependence of all our functions, how we perform them, and the family dynamics of those we serve. We must decide on — and be clear about — our key values and guiding principles, which we are now defining. This will determine how we assess child safety and family strengths and deficiencies going forward and guide our case planning.
At the same time, we plan to strengthen local office resources to allow families to apply and renew their benefits with a local case manager. We will continue to offer services through our call center as well.
Constituent engagement is the third component of our blueprint. Too often, agencies roll out changes without first having conversations with key stakeholders, internal and external. That is a mistake. Participatory planning helps develop workable and sustainable solutions, and it leads to buy-in, which increases commitment to successful implementation.
We want to better engage those connected to the recipients of our services — law enforcement and emergency responders, pediatricians, school counselors and teachers, members of the judiciary, legislators, business and religious leaders, members of the media, and more — as well as the recipients themselves, including former foster children.
Pursuant to Reform Council recommendations, we also will be communicating with Department of Family and Children Services boards at the county level and plan to create district-level DFCS advisory boards to improve service delivery and policy implementation in each district.
Clearly, there is much work to be done. This high-level plan sets direction and establishes guidelines, but will require an intense strategic process to put into practice. We have massive challenges ahead, but I am confident in our ability to meet them and excel on behalf of Georgia’s children and families
