Helping state agencies, courts, and communities improve child welfare outcomes by preserving, restoring, and growing families
 
 

my three-fold model

Consulting services grounded in a best practice model for child welfare

Preserve Restore Grow

 
 
 
 
 
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Preserve.

The Need

Child welfare systems are set up to respond after child maltreatment has already occurred, so investing in community-based prevention is essential to keep children safe with their families. Too many children enter foster care unnecessarily and family preservation is not rightly prioritized along with safety for children. National data indicate states struggle to safely maintain children in their homes through adequate services and interventions, and risk and safety assessments are not always completed appropriately. Current Child and Family Services Review performance on Safety Outcome 2 is 55%.* 


The Solution

We ensure families are preserved by comprehensively assessing families using a culturally responsive, trauma-informed and attachment-centered approach. Safety assessments must include a child’s felt safety. We correctly discern between an at-risk child and an unsafe child. When children are at risk, we avoid unnecessary separation or foster care placement by wrapping around families and strengthening protective factors in order to keep children safe. Families are engaged as partners in ensuring safety of children while preserving attachments.

 
 
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I believe systems that preserve families support the following best practices:

Primary prevention is prioritized to ensure that children are being protected in their communities. Local resources are leveraged to promote protective factors and strengthen families.

Safety of children is clearly and consistently defined using concrete descriptors of behavior and conditions in assessments. The language used to describe safety and risk is understood by families and is shared across agencies, courts, and communities to foster improved consistency in these key concepts.


Exhaustive (beyond “reasonable”) efforts are made to safely prevent foster care placement and these efforts are promoted and thoroughly evaluated by the Court.

Thoughtful, creative and robust safety plans are developed when needed, along with a plan for monitoring them, in order to keep children safe at home.

Extended family and fictive kin are actively involved in supporting the preservation of the family and safety of children.

In-Home case plans articulate how the protective capacities of parents will be enhanced and how protective factors will be strengthened.

A team made up of professionals, family members and their supports is utilized in completing comprehensive assessments of the family and any safety or risk concerns. Assessments thoughtfully consider family culture, trauma, and attachment history.

Meaningful and frequent worker interactions with the family are viewed as the most essential aspect of case practice because of their impact on rapport-building with families, quality assessment and subsequent decision-making.

Clinical Supervision is aimed at prioritizing family preservation and child safety concurrently.

Services are readily available to address immediate crises, mitigate safety threats and support families in their own homes.


Quality Assurance measures and processes are in place to assess the quality of assessments that inform placement decisions, the efforts made at preventing removal, and the activities conducted to strengthen protective factors.

 
 
 
 

work with me

Let’s work together to ensure that families are safely preserved whenever possible.

 
 
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