How to Help Abused and Neglected Children

“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.

3 Reasons Child Welfare Organizations Don’t Innovate

by Annette Sandberg

We live in exciting times.  If you zoom around cyberspace, as I do daily, you know what I mean.  There’s Twitter, Friendfeed, Ning, Facebook 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.