What skills and strategies help a parent to effectively navigate and advocate for more effective services from the Child Welfare system?

Public child welfare incorporates a broad array of services that are targeted toward vulnerable and troubled families and children, such as families in crisis, children who have been abused and neglected, children with special medical and mental health needs, and children who are delinquent. Each state has a social and legal responsibility as well as basic federal funding sources to develop and implement the following services:

Prevention/Family Support - services to keep children and families from entering the system. Child welfare administrators believe that children belong with their families in a safe and stable environment.

Early Intervention/Family Preservation - services to address the needs of families in crisis or at risk. These services seek to strengthen and stabilize families, thereby preventing further involvement in the system.

Child Protective Services - investigations of reports of suspected abuse and neglect and provision of treatment services.

Foster Care - placement of children in out-of-home care.

Permanence - establishing a permanent home for a child, such as reunification with biological family, placement with an adoptive family or relatives, or establishment of a guardian.

Post Permanency/Aftercare - services to support a permanent placement, known as reunification services, post - adoption services, or services to children and families in kinship care arrangements.

Independent Living - services to prepare older youths, as they age out of the foster care system, for self-sufficiency.

Child Welfare services are seldom offered to families who have not experienced or are not on the brink of a crisis. This fact, more than any other, dictates the range of skills and strategies needed to navigate this system.

Useful skills include: 

• Flexibility 

• Expect to see frequent staff changes in the Child Welfare System because the work is very stressful.

• Seek common ground with your assigned social worker in order to resolve issues. An adversarial relationship will not help your family. 

• Persistence 

• Stay involved with your designated social worker and give input to the development and implementation of your case plan.

• Contact your designated social worker or supervisor, if s/he fails to contact you after a visit, investigation, or inquiry. 

• Advocacy

• Request family support and family preservation services if your family is experiencing a crisis.

• Advocate for your child, a court ordered placement does not terminate your rights as a parent.

• If your child is in out-of-home care make his/her medical records available to the agency in order that medical needs may be addressed early and appropriately.

• Make school history and records available to the placement agency to facilitate proper and appropriate school placement.

• Open mindedness

• Consider the possibility that this crisis is an opportunity to assess and address your own issues (domestic violence, substance or alcohol abuse, childhood abuse and neglect, parenting skills).

• Decide that prolonged anger and defensiveness will impede progress toward resolution of family issues and ask for appropriate services to resolve these feelings.

Other strategies you might use include:

• For Native American families: Identifying your tribal status and beginning the Indian Child Welfare Act processes immediately.

• Telling staff, as services are beginning, what family members can help.

• Getting a knowledgeable advocate or set up a support system.

• Keeping a list of names, description of functions, and phone numbers of all staff that are involved with you and your family.

• Keeping a journal of the facts.

• Keeping appointments; proactively request them at times that you can be available.

• Seeking out and use an attorney whenever there is court involvement.

• Seeking out and using the agencies' grievance process whenever a decision seems totally inappropriate. All child welfare agencies must have this process available to families