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 "Business" of CPS

If Child Protective Services (CPS) were a publicly traded company, what would we say is our "product"? What are we in the business of producing? Most of us are not accustomed to thinking of CPS as a business but perhaps it's not such a bad orientation given the current climate of accountability and outcome measurement.

The Adoption and Safe Families Act established safety, permanency and well-being as the primary outcomes for child welfare. These outcomes are certainly well known to administrators and planners in state CPS agencies because of the Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) process. Most child protection staff and direct line supervisors likely have some familiarity with the CFSR outcomes, but I wonder if the average CPS caseworker thinks of these outcomes as the "product" they are in the business of producing.

How would a worker apply this type of orientation to their caseload? Let's take one of the safety outcomes as an example. Safety Outcome 1 is "children are first and foremost, protected from abuse and neglect." This outcome is measured through two quantitative items: 1) timeliness of initiating investigations of reports of child maltreatment and 2) repeat maltreatment.

A worker responsible for investigating reports plays a direct role in making a timely response. Once the case is assigned, the worker is responsible for making the face-to-face contact within the designated time frame. At the individual case level, the need for a timely response is a critical safety assessment and safety management function. If the case circumstances reported suggest that the child might be unsafe, a more urgent response is needed. The worker's response on each case directly impacts on the safety of each child. A timely response, which results in appropriate action, can protect a child and make them safe. This is an individual case outcome - this child is safe.

A timely response on an individual case means that the outcome was achieved in that case. Collectively measuring the timeliness of response in all cases is how outcome achievement is measured for the entire agency. Clearly, the individual outcome of timeliness of response in each case, which is directly determined by the direct line worker, adds up to the collective measure of timeliness for the agency.

The second item used to measure safety is repeat maltreatment. This is measured by the recording of a new substantiated report of maltreatment within 6 months of the first substantiated report. The caseworker's and supervisors decisions and actions contribute significantly to the achievement of this outcome. The worker and supervisor make decisions about safety (immediate or impending threats of serious harm); they take actions to implement safety plans if needed; they seek court intervention if necessary; they determine risk of future maltreatment; they implement services; they establish case plans and; they make decisions about substantiating the report. All of these contribute to the likelihood of a future substantiated incident of maltreatment.

So just as with the first item, timeliness, what happens in each case in terms of repeat maltreatment collectively determines agency performance on the federal outcome of safety. Workers and supervisors are key players in the achievement of the established federal outcomes. The product of safety is not just the agency's collective product, it's clearly the worker's individual case product. The other outcomes of permanency and well-being could be examined in the same way. CPS is in the business, case by case, of trying to produce safety, permanency and well-being in each case. Those are our products.

Certainly, CPS is not and never will be successful in achieving these products in all cases. This is due to many factors, not the least of which is the involuntary client population served. Nevertheless, the orientation toward these as our products could be useful. Workers and supervisors are busy daily with the activities and demands of their cases, and most seldom take the time to think of their level of success at achieving client outcomes. In order to make these real to staff, the data must be reported at the unit and caseload level, so a worker and supervisor can examine their own success at achieving the "products" of CPS.

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. Faced with the possibility of being the only remaining caseworker for her county CPS agency, the statement made by this person from earlier in the training session 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 remaining 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.

Even as I write this potpourri article, I found myself reluctant to launch into an editorial that might be perceived as "making excuses" for the varied effectiveness of CPS. Off and on throughout my professional career in public child welfare, I have found myself battling against the urge to throw my arms up in the air and confess that the job of CPS is a losing proposition. Not allowing myself to give up and give in to the perpetual voices that say the job is undoable, there are not enough resources, the problems are too extreme, there's not enough time to do what's is required, usually I elected to reframe the negative realities of the job as a challenge to be understood and overcome and I push on determined to continue fighting the "good fight" for improving CPS practice. As of late however, it seems as though I've been encountering a significant number of anecdotal experiences and stories that are similar to the circumstances of the worker described above. Again I find myself questioning the extent to which CPS effectiveness is achievable. The issue for me is not whether CPS programs can be manipulated, adapted and refined, or whether the growing knowledge related to the state-of-the-art can continue to enhance and promote the professionalization of the field. For me, the most pressing issue is whether changes internal to CPS programs and the state-of-the-art can adequately compensate for the contextual variables that impact the effectiveness equation?

Through my exposure to the national scene, I've come to conclude that CPS program success cannot occur without carefully confronting and resolving the contextual issues within which CPS operates. The contextual variables that seem so glaringly obvious but remarkably appear to evoke so little deliberation and concerned, may very well be the greatest obstacle to ultimately achieving the outcome of CPS effectiveness. For all the efforts and advancements in the field over these past few decades related to better articulated policies, procedures, protocols, guidelines for practice, model designs, improved standardization in decision-making, there is one piece of the equation that has not been worked out, and that is the context, the proverbial reality in which policy, protocols and structured approaches to decision-making must be implemented.

What are the contextual variables, this reality that heavily influences the implementation of ideas, advancements and best efforts and intentions? The contextual variables are enormous state budget shortfalls, which 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 non-essential and essential caseworker positions cutback.

For those jurisdictions that have not been directly affected by personnel cutbacks, excessive staff turnover has continued to be a challenge. Some counties CPS agency report that on occasion they experience vacancies in positions that could last several months either due to a lack of qualified applicants or hiring freezes.

The characteristic of the workforce is a contextual issue that cannot be overlooked. Staff representation is inevitably influenced by the nature of CPS. Poor working conditions, dangerous and stressful working conditions, lack of community support and resources and low pay make it significant difficulty in establishing and developing staff that perceive CPS as a chosen and sustainable professional career.

The context is ever increasing job and workload demands. Efforts to reduce and better manage caseload sizes have been only marginally successful. Often, I am consulting with ongoing CPS workers who are still "managing" caseloads that are unreasonably high. In many agencies the workload issues simply comes down to a matter of supply and demand: agency 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 too often there are more families in need of CPS then there are CPS resources to adequately serve them.

When considering the context in which CPS is delivered one must further recognize two significant realities: 1) 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 and 2) staff are being asked to accomplish this task with little or no evidence that there is a prevailing approach or methods to CPS that effectively works.

Then, of course, there are political influences, routine changes in leadership and as many changes in agency direction and vision. Perhaps at this point it is prudent to stop disseminating the contextual dilemma for fear that the reality will overwhelm a potential solution? Truly it is difficult to be empathetic with how context influences the ability to be effective in providing CPS if one has not been charges with such a responsibility.

These contextual issues are not new; they have been a demanding reality of the field for sometime. Equally thelack of acknowledgement regarding the context issues and how they potentially influence CPS effectiveness is longstanding. What is new, however, is that CPS is now being measured by a specific standard for which it must adhere. This is the age of accountability. For the first time in the modern child welfare era states are being uniformly evaluated against established federal standards to determine CPS program effectiveness. Not only is there a federal review of states related to CPS program effectiveness but accountability also comes in the form of lawsuits, the media, national reform movements, civil rights guardians, quality assurance technology, governor's task forces and the like. Without question there is a long line of individuals who are ready, willing and able to take their pound of flesh from CPS for it's seeming failures to conform with established standards.

In itself, establishing standard for practice effectiveness and instituting accountability is not without merit. What is notable, however, is that CPS is apparently being evaluated 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 findings against the context in which CPS is delivered is akin to Don Quixote being out of touch with reality and approaching CPS practice like an old knight fighting windmills. We can only begin to put into place effective approaches to CPS intervention when the contextual variables are fully confronted, understood and addressed by all stakeholders. Until the contextual realities that define and confine CPS practice are acknowledged by those who would hold CPS to a particular standard of accountability, the field will continue it's Don Quixote approach to imagining itself to be effective.

Is there a need for continued CPS program improvements and accountability? Of course. Continuous program enhancement and accountability are hallmarks of any field that seeks to further professionalize itself. However, given the current context in which CPS operates, it is important to maintain a balance in perspective when assessing the effectiveness of CPS and determining what can reasonably be achieved in terms of program improvements. There needs to be a realistic and practical consideration of whether established standards for program effectiveness and in some cases CPS policies are achievable and/or sustainable when one weighs in the contextual variables. In fact, as the caseworker in the training group suggested, it could be said that CPS is relatively successful at achieving desired outcomes with children and families, when considering what it takes to do the job. Fundamentally addressing the contextual issues in which CPS operates is perhaps the most critical strategy for achieving program improvement.