Our guest blogger today is Shelly Yanoff, the executive director of Public Citizens for Children and Youth.
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Fixing the System: Ringing the alarm
Every day, every hour the phone rings at DHS - reporting a child at risk of abuse and neglect. A case worker goes out, investigates, returns and with consultation decides whether the child should be accepted for DHS service. Every day, every hour, children at risk enter the system; the overwhelming majority of them are adequately provided for and protected. But some are not.
Philadelphia like most counties and big cities contracts with private, non-profit agencies to provide the actual care for children whose families have not been able to provide for them. DHS next works with private provider agencies to develop plans for the child. Sometimes the worker goes to Family Court to make the case to remove the child or to keep the child at home; either way the worker is to monitor and update the plan and oversee the child’s progress. All sides have representation at Court hearings and there is a body of law as well as policy that stresses the importance of keeping the child at home with the family if at all possible. To watch out for children, particularly those who are young or who have special health care needs who are in vulnerable situations requires strong oversight, committed case workers and a system that catches gaps, that can sound alarms and be heard. Like all alarms, people need to know where they are and be certain they are connected so that they can be heard. In too many instances, our systems are disconnected.
Disconnect #1: “the Chain of Command”
DHS’ organizational framework is that of a chain of command. Those who chose this work to help families spend much of the time policing the performance of others. If they are troubled by what they see, they are to report it up the chain to a supervisor who usually does not carry a case load. The path then goes up and up and then crosses over to the private agency to go down. The case worker thus can become distanced from the actual “family” work which in turn diminishes the worker’s sense of impact. The city’s case workers, many of whom went into this work to help children become distanced from their mission by being part of a system that emphasizes chain of command over action, and paperwork over social work.
Disconnect #2: "The City’s pace and practice in staffing and monitoring providers"
DHS is hampered by the city’s historic slow pace in filling positions; thus workers are often trying to cover cases “temporarily” while waiting for new workers to be hired. . Add to this mix, the large number of providers to monitor, mix in some political considerations, union support for all workers, an overlay of racial issues and the only thing that is easy to say about the system is that it is challenging.
Disconnect #3: "The difficulty of monitoring so many agencies"
The City contracts with hundreds of child welfare non-profit agencies; most are mission driven and determined to provide good care. Even those considered excellent, suffer from the city’s late and low payment history, and often have trouble keeping staff due to low pay. The City ‘s record of monitoring them, providing them with guidance and oversight is complex at best .
Disconnect #4: "Other public agencies not getting involved"
Other city and state agencies do not regularly play roles in the story. The children in the family were not attending school; Danielle was a child with special health care needs. Yet neither the education nor the health systems reached out to help.
Disconnect #5: "None of us acted or viewed taking care of children at risk as part of our responsibility."
If we had what would we have done?
The people who tried to ring the alarm in Danielle Kelly’s case were not able to make the alarm heard How do we change that?
We begin:
By remembering that most workers and most agencies and most families are caring for and protecting their children;
By modifying the chain of command culture to the caring and compassionate culture;
By making it easier to express concern about a case and to feel that the insight matters;
By creating more crossovers between private providers and city workers;
By having supervisors carry cases to increase the sense of the agency’s purpose:
By limiting the number of private providers so that they can be adequately monitored;
By requiring more involvement of the education and health care systems in dhs’ work; and
By creating a strong well-publicized office of ombudsman to oversee and investigate cases so that the alarm is heard; AND
By remembering that a disconnected system hurts all of us.
Comments (1)
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