Transcript Document 7714856

Governor’s Action Group for Safe Children
Work Group 3
Seamless System of Placement Options:
Community Partnership
Draft for discussion 7-24-02
Collaboration
• A mutually beneficial and well-defined
relationship entered into by two or more
organizations to achieve common goals.
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Collaboration
• Includes:
A commitment to mutual relationships
and goals.
A jointly developed structure and shared
responsibility.
Mutual authority and accountability for
success.
Sharing of resources and rewards.
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Community Collaboratives
• Tangible ways of stretching available
resources.
• Raise visibility on local issues.
• Assist communities in setting priorities for the
allocation of resources.
• Unleash new talents and resources to address
old problems.
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Findings
1. Collaboratives are creative problem-solving
tools for local communities, utilizing
resources and personnel.
• Significant, sustained commitment.
• Rewards are systemic civic and
community change in specific policy
areas.
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Findings
2. No statewide effort of collaboration to
prevent and reduce out-of-home placement;
primarily initiated by foundations in a few
cities around the nation.
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Findings
3. Each of the Clark Foundation Community
Partnerships for Protecting Children (CPPC)
sites met or exceeded the indicators of
progress for Phase I.
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Findings
Phase II Challenges:
 Sustaining/improving efforts.
 Developing/implementing
tracking and monitoring system
on outcomes.
 Improving quality/scope within
target communities before rollout
to other communities.
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Findings
4. The Iowa Director of Human Services,
Jessie Rasmussen, cites several roll-out
considerations and obstacles.
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Rollout Considerations
 Number of sites should be balanced to
maintain integrity of the initiative.
 Technical assistance needs and capacity
should match.
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Obstacles to Expansion
•Levels of understanding
•Lack of resources
•Approach to change
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Findings
5. Family to Family evaluation of program
impact showed the most consistent finding
as being the reduction in the number of
placements experienced by children in
care.
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Findings
6. Two changes in patterns of permanent
placements occurred in Family to Family
sites:
• Sites that expanded use of kinship care
increasingly placed children in the
guardianship of relatives when they left
custody.
• Some sites improved reunification rates.
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Findings
7. No one central source of information or
single contact point for information on
faith-based organizations and their services
to support out of home placements.
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Findings
8. In Family Connection collaboratives,
resources invested by the General
Assembly ($50,000 for most counties) are
being more than matched by local or
external investments in a majority of the
communities.
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Findings
9. Georgia’s Child Protective Service Task
Force saw the need for a comprehensive,
community-based system that connects
families with service providers, the faith
community, schools, courts and others
concerned about the well being of children.
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Excerpt
“The State should build on existing efforts
such as Family Connection and coordinate
all state resources more effectively in
partnership with communities. Phasing in of
the new coordinated system should begin
with several counties that demonstrate high
need and/or readiness.”
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Proposed Recommendations
1. Investigate and review national models of
collaboration specifically related to child
welfare reform, such as the Decategorization
Program in Iowa and the Edna McConnell
Clark Foundation sites. Transfer knowledge
and lessons learned to communities in
Georgia for possible replication.
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Proposed Recommendations
2. Develop a strategy with major faith-based
organizations to enhance the involvement of
the faith-based community in local and
state-level collaborative efforts around the
issue of child protective services.
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Proposed Recommendations
3. Building on the existing network of county
collaboratives, create a process to
communicate local priorities, best practice,
and policy barriers to state partners to
influence state policy and decisions.
Conversely, develop a strategy to connect
major policy initiatives at the state level to
communities who are demonstrating results
in related priority areas.
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Proposed Recommendations
4. Evaluate initiatives across Georgia’s
communities, specifically related to out-ofhome placements that have been successful
for replication to other communities who
have an interest in similar collaborative work
and strategies.
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Proposed Recommendations
5. Determine and support a statewide vehicle
to direct the development, implementation,
and capacity-building of local collaboratives
with built-in measures of accountability and
monitoring.
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Proposed Recommendations
• Establish through a Memorandum of
Agreement or interagency agreements, a
similar model of collaboration at the statelevel which will support local decisionmaking, address barriers to collaboration
experienced by communities, and will
promote state priority initiatives such as
child welfare in communities through
resources and technical assistance.
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Proposed Recommendations
6. Add an “out of home placement” benchmark
to the set of indicators used by Family
Connection to measure the well-being of
children in Georgia. Use the current process
of the Family Connection Partnership in
reviewing the 26 benchmarks which
communities follow in determining results.
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