Dream a Little Louder

I took the 43 Things Personality Quiz and found out I’m a  Self-Knowing Extroverted Tree Hugger

• Read More »

I have spent much of my life trying to figure out how to be me without alienating you. Unfortunately, these goals are mutually exclusive. How many times has someone told you to “just be yourself”?  How many times have you wondered what the heck that means?  When I quiet my ego chatter for a micro-moment, and get courageously honest, I know EXACTLY what that means for me. And, it has nothing to do with anyone else’s opinion of me, or what they think I should be about.  Gary Vaynerchuk inspired me with the following video, and even if you’ve already seen it, it’s worth watching again.  Enjoy!

• Read More »

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” -Albert Einstein

A dear friend e-mailed me this article about Adrian Conway, a three-year-old boy who died following abuse by his mother. My friend wanted to have a dialog about “how we deal with this.” That’s a loaded question with no easy answers. What I do know is that Child Protective Services’ typical pendulum swing between removal of all at-risk children from their families to family preservation at any cost doesn’t work. The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform blog has written extensively about this issue and articulate the systemic challenges very well. Go here if you want to see what they have to say.

There are many things we can do to effect change for abused children and their struggling families on a personal level. Here’s my short list of suggested starting points:

1. Get informed: Find out what has already been attempted. What worked and what didn’t? To begin with just find articles online and read blogs.
2. Get involved: Why not start your own blog? Blogs are about having conversations that aren’t necessarily happening in the “real world”. Join an online forum. Or become a mentor, or a foster parent.
3. Benchmark outside the box: Benchmarking is one of my favorite activities. I regularly scan the internet to find child welfare organizations engaged in promising practices. What’s even more fun is looking at organizations outside the child welfare world to see if they’re doing anything interesting that might be applied within the child welfare system.

In one of my next posts I’ll tell you about one of my recent “benchmarking outside the box” ideas to help teens who are aging out of the foster care system. Stay tuned and join the conversation by adding your suggestions in the comment section below.

• Read More »

What does collaboration mean anyway? We seem to use that word so frequently in the social services field, yet we seem to be missing the true meaning of the word. My experience as a director of a foster care program is that when another agency, usually Child Protective Services, talks about collaborating, it usually means they are expecting us to attend a meeting. In these meetings information is shared, then attendees are given an opportunity to provide some feedback about the presented information, and at the end everyone goes off in their own direction, usually disgruntled, frustrated or just confused.

How can we collaborate more successfully? I have identified five ingredients necessary when setting the tone for true collaboration:

(1) There must be an agreement between the parties who are collaborating that there is a need and that each party will benefit from the effort.

(2) There must be a transparent process where there is open, genuine communication going on, not just lip service and then pushing one’s agenda forward despite the feedback.

(3) Individuals involved in collaboration need to use their best active listening skills. If we don’t understand each other than we might actually be working against each other unwittingly!

(4) Be ready for conflict – It’s part of relationship development. If conflict is done in a respectful way then more energy is released for true collaboration. Relationships usually improve when the conflicts are resolved.

(5) Be ready for good results when true collaboration is happening!!!! It’s true that together we can achieve more. Of course that means really joining together not just meeting together.

I would love to hear your feedback on this topic and on your experiences with successful collaboration.

• Read More »

I am so excited to be here and I want to take this opportunity to talk about my focus for this blog.  I have been working in a private non-profit social service agency focused on foster care and adoption for the past fourteen years.  Prior to that I worked for twelve years within the public state child protective services (CPS) system providing similar types of services.   I have discovered that it is more difficult to adequately serve foster children and their families in the private non-profit social service arena without the colloboration with the CPS system, which functions as the legal guardian for these children.  I am interested in forging better collaboration between the CPS system and the private social service agencies who are basically serving the same purpose: providing substitute care for abused and neglected children, keeping them safe from harm, helping them heal from abuse and neglect, and moving them towards permanency.

I have worked hard to develop strong working relationships with the CPS system believing that relationships are the key to working more effectively together.  I am having more difficulty navigating successfully within the Texas Department and Family Services system than I had working with their counterpart system in New Mexico.  I am certain that the difference in size between the two states has something to do with the additional challenges.  One of the key ingredients for successful collaboration is good communication.  This seems to be missing between the private not-profit sector and CPS, leaving the private non-profit sector struggling to get basic information about the foster child that they have been charged to care for in one of their licensed foster homes.  For example:  What is the plan for visitation with the family? When is the child going home? Why was the child placed into care to begin with?  What is the child’s medical and educational needs? This is a common disconnect experienced by both foster parents and agency staff who work within private non-profit agencies focused on foster care and adoption. It seems difficult to request the information necessary to provide adequate services without creating  conflict with the state’s CPS workers.  While in New Mexico, I was successful in forging good colloboration with the public child welfare system  and I desire to do so again here in Texas. My dream is to support a child welfare system that collaborates with the private provider community in order to develop resources and solutions for children and their families.  

• Read More »

We live in exciting times.  If you zoom around cyberspace, as I do daily, you know what I mean.  There’s Twitter, Friendfeed, Ning, and other social media platforms that allow people to connect like never before.  They’re sharing ideas and getting excited about possibilities.  And I love it.  I love watching people connect, share ideas, and support each other.  But sometimes I feel lonely.  Why? Because I haven’t found anyone passionate, or even mildly interested in child welfare or child/youth mental health treatment innovation.  The key word being INNOVATION.  

I have spent most of my professional life trying to understand why innovators don’t flock to the non-profit social services field.  Heck, you can be a mediocre creative and still have daily epiphanies about quality and outcome improvement within the child welfare world.  So why aren’t we further along?  Possibly because:

1. Funding supports the wrong outcome—Social service programs are usually funded by federal and state agencies who often determine funding based on who will charge the least amount of money for a service, rather than on who will be most effective in improving the lives of children, youth and families.
2. Graduate degrees and licensure are valued more highly than legitimate experience or even best/promising practice based services—I highly value education and competency.  I have spent much of my career as a trainer and hold two masters degrees.  However, most leaders in the social service arena hold advanced degrees, yet are fairly ineffective when it comes to improving success rates. I have had the privilege of working with a few high performers who operate outside the non-profit world, providing outstanding services to the private for-profit world.  They don’t necessarily hold advanced degrees, but are very well trained and provide outstanding outcomes. How is this possible?  Privately funded customers expect outcomes.  When they pay for a service out of their own pocket, they expect to see results.  They are willing to pay what it takes to succeed.
3. Working with children and families doesn’t pay—And I’m not necessarily talking about money, though that would definitely be a truism.  Degrees are highly valued within the field, yet paradoxically, there’s a pervasive attitude floating around that anyone who “cares” can work within the child welfare world. Expectations of competence are low and continuing education classes often focus on perpetuating interventions and attitudes that align with the status quo.  Why is this a problem?  Innovators and new thought professionals end up leaving the field, or lower their expectations to the point where oxygen deprivation cuts off blood flow to their creativity.

• Read More »

Once upon a time I was a visionary dreamer; seeing potential where others experienced static noise.  Actually, I frequently had multiple dreams every day.  Somewhere along the way, though, I turned down the volume on my enthusiasm and found myself depleted by the buzz, cynicism and rhetoric so pervasive in our culture today.  I bought into external feedback telling me that my dreams were unrealistic, not practical, or ahead of the times.   But there’s something in the air, and perhaps it’s time to dust off some old dreams and create some new ones.  What’s your dream?

• Read More »