Safety Organized Practice for a Transformed Child Welfare System

About the Program

Category: Children and Youth (Best in Category)

Year: 2018

The Placer County Children’s System of Care (CSOC), along with the State of California and many other jurisdictions around the country, have come to recognize that children who spend many years in the foster care system have some troublesome outcomes, including increased homelessness, a lower high school graduation and college attendance rate, and higher drug and alcohol addiction. For this reason, CSOC has adopted a robust Safety Organized Practice (SOP) implementation strategy to avoid unnecessary detentions by bolstering family support and intervention upfront. In cases where a child must be removed from the home due to abuse or neglect, a juvenile dependency case begins. Parents receive services to support reunification when possible. This can be an overwhelming process for parents to navigate. Many are resistant to working with county staff due to long-persisting negative stigma surrounding child welfare workers. To better assist parents and build their trust in order to work together towards reunification, CSOC has built out an extensive orientation process that includes not just information-sharing but also hearing from other parents with lived experience. As a result of these efforts, the county has been able to keep more children in their homes without increasing incidences of child maltreatment.