monthly article for November 2003

Welcome to the CPS Practice Potpourri. Caseworkers, supervisors, and managers will find a new forum for ideas, solutions, and methods in CPS Practice. ACTION staff and invited quest will offer you their insight and observation on CPS practice. We hope CPS Practice Potpourri will meet your demand for practical and experience based observation that will be resource to support and enhance your work with children and families. Send us an email and let us know what you think. Come back and visit CPS Practice Potpourri often.

The Age of Accountability:

The Quixotic Quest for CPS Program Improvement

"Are we trying to do good work considering what it takes to do this job? Yeah. Are we improving how we make decisions? Yes. Can we do better? Probably so."

A CPS investigation worker made this comment during a child safety intervention training session this past summer. Following the training, this same worker indicated that she was one of only two remaining CPS caseworkers left in the county agency and that her co-caseworker was considering resigning her position. The statement made by this person was a somber, if not a discouragingly accurate, commentary on how the context for CPS limits the possibility for effectiveness. Any information received by this worker during the training workshop that might help to enhance her decision-making related to child safety, is certain to at least be partially offset by the reality back at the office that she may soon be the only caseworker to field cases. It is likely that this worker's experience provides a window into what many individuals in the field must contend with routinely. They endeavor to persevere and do the job of CPS in spite of enormous and often changing demands.

The most pressing issue is whether changes internal to CPS programs and the state-of-the-art practices can adequately compensate for the contextual variables that impact the effectiveness equation. As I write this article, I found myself reluctant to launch into an editorial that might be perceived as "making excuses" for the varied effectiveness of CPS. Throughout my professional career in public child welfare, I have found myself battling the urge to throw my arms up in the air and confess that the job of CPS is a losing proposition. The job is undoable, resources are scarce, the problems are too extreme, time is limited. I have usually elected to reframe the negative realities of the job as a challenge to be understood and overcome and I continue fighting the "good fight." Lately I have been encountering a significant number of anecdotal experiences that are similar to the circumstances of the worker described above. I find myself questioning the extent to which CPS effectiveness is achievable. The issue is no longer whether CPS programs can be manipulated, adapted and refined, or whether the growing knowledge related to the state-of-the-art practices can continue to enhance and promote the professionalism of the field.

Through my exposure to the national scene, I have concluded that CPS program success cannot occur without carefully confronting and resolving the contextual issues within which CPS operates. The contextual variables may very well be the greatest obstacle to ultimately achieving the outcome of CPS effectiveness. The efforts and advancements in the field over the past few decades related to better articulated policies, procedures, protocols, guidelines for practice, model designs, and improved standardization in decision-making have not addressed the context, the proverbial reality in which policy, protocols and structured approaches to decision-making must be implemented.

What are the contextual variables that heavily influence the implementation of ideas, advancements and best efforts?

1) State budget shortfalls have resulted in static or reduced funding. Too often state and county CPS administrators are being asked, or rather, required, to do more with fewer resources. Some states and counties in fact have seen both non-essential and essential caseworker positions cut back.

2) Staff turnover has continued to be a challenge for those jurisdictions that have not been directly affected by personnel cutbacks. Some CPS agencies report that they experience vacancies, either due to a lack of qualified applicants or hiring freezes, in positions that could last several months.

3) Characteristics of the workforce interact with the nature and characteristics of CPS. Poor working conditions, dangerous and stressful working conditions, lack of community support and resources and low pay make it significantly difficult to establish and develop a staff that perceives CPS as a sustainable professional career.

4) Increasing workloads result from a reduced workforce. Efforts to reduce and manage caseload sizes have been only marginally successful. CPS workers are still managing caseloads that are unreasonably high. The workload issue comes down to a matter of supply and demand: agency supply capacity and community demand. Whether due to staff turnover, an increase of families entering the system or a combination of both, the bottom line is that there are more families in need of CPS than there are CPS resources to serve them.

5) CPS works predominately with an involuntary population. Not only are resources taxed but CPS staff are intervening to assist families that in most cases do not desire CPS involvement.

6) CPS staff must work with little or no evidence that there is an effective approach or method to CPS.

7) Political influences, routine changes in leadership and the many changes in agency direction and vision compound all these issues.

Perhaps it is prudent to stop enumerating the contextual dilemma; the reality will overwhelm a potential solution. Those who have been charged with such a responsibility must deal with the context regardless of the empathy of others outside the field.

The contextual issues are not new; equally, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the context issues and how they potentially influence CPS effectiveness is longstanding. What is new are the standards to which CPS is now held accountable. For the first time in the modern child welfare era, states are being uniformly evaluated against established federal standards to determine CPS program effectiveness. Accountability also comes in the form of the legal community, the media, national reform movements, civil rights guardians, quality assurance technology, governor's task forces, etc.

Establishing standards for practice effectiveness and instituting accountability is not without merit. What is notable, however, is that CPS is apparently being evaluating for effectiveness without the consideration of context. If context is the determinant of meaning, then what are the implications for states that fail to be in substantial conformance with the determined national standard? Promoting CPS program improvement without considering or at least balancing the findings against the context in which CPS is delivered is akin to Don Quixote tilting at windmills. We can put effective approaches to CPS intervention into place when the contextual variables are fully confronted, understood and addressed by all stakeholders.

There is a need for continued CPS program improvement and accountability. Program enhancement and accountability are hallmarks of any field that is constantly evolving to meet its professional demands. Given the current contexts in which CPS operates, it is necessary to maintain a balance in perspective when assessing the effectiveness of CPS. Are standards and policy realistic and achievable when one weighs the contextual variables? In fact, as the caseworker in the training group suggested, can it be said that CPS is relatively successful at achieving desired outcomes with children and families, when considering what it takes to do the job?

Todd Holder, MSW has been in the Child Welfare field for 15 years. He is a Senior Staff Consultant with ACTION for Child Protection.