The Four Cornerstones of Child Welfare Practice

Several times a year, the mass media report stories of children dying in terrible circumstances in homes supervised by child welfare services. Many informed critics of a system where such tragedies occur state that systematic risk assessment tools are the solution.

Accurate risk assessment is a cornerstone of effective child welfare practice, but if social workers do not have the skills to get into the homes and see the children they are supposed to be supervising, then it matters little how good the risk assessment tool is. If social workers do not understand what they are seeing once they are in the homes, then risk assessments are of no use. Therefore, pre-service training and on-going training is the second cornerstone of effective child welfare practice.

Risk assessments only work when staff are well-trained Part of this training is the training of the professionals who supervise the social workers. They have several roles, but the two most important are to help front line workers sort out what is going on with the families and to provide the back-up and strategies to ensure that the front line workers actually see the children. 

There are many well-trained social workers willing to work in child welfare systems, but the pay in child welfare agencies offer often is too low. They earn higher incomes in private practice and in other agencies. Furthermore, the caseloads can be huge. Front-line social workers may not have the time to do right by the families for whom they have responsibility. Front-line workers also can suffer low-level depression and anxiety because of the stress of the job.  These issues must be addressed if child welfare systems are to prevent future tragedies.

A network of services that are effective is the third cornerstone, which means that after an accurate risk assessment made by well-trained social workers, the social workers have effective services to provide parents with the resources and support they require. For example, many of the parents who require services have small children and are poor.  They have trouble finding adequate child care and transportation can be a major impediment to getting to the agency where services are available.

If parents also have mental health and chemical dependency issues, they may require day treatment or even in-patient treatment.  What do they do with their children?  The most successful programs take in both the parents and the children.  Finally, many families in child welfare systems are people of color.  The services must be culturally sensitive and understand the value systems and traditions of the people they are to serve. This often is not the case. The result is that parents “fail” when in reality the systems may have failed and that led to parental drop-out. 

The fourth cornerstone is the effective application of existing social policy. Safety first is the guiding principle of child welfare practice. All too often, front-line social workers and their supervisors by-pass children’s safety for the sake of their own biases that lead them to believe that even the most abusive and neglectful biological parents are better than non-biological parents. Some parents all but eat their young and the children remain with them. A second reason for misapplication of policy is the desire to save money. Children sometimes are left in dire circumstances because child welfare agencies do not have the money to do what needs to be done to keep children safe.

In all four cornerstones, money is an issue. We don’t pay child welfare workers enough. Pre-service and in-service training costs money. Effective services costs money. Effective risk assessment tools cost money.

The need for effective child welfare services runs into the “no more taxes” lobby, into the competing interests of the financiers and bankers who lobby to fund their interests and not the interests of families and children, and the hegemonic motives of those who are put the U.S. in the position of spending billions a month on an invasion of another country that few want. The imbalance in federal priorities and budgets is having  devastating effects on millions of US children and ther families.

There must be a national conversation and an informed public involved in this conversation about our child welfare system. The general public must be informed of what life is like for families in the child welfare system. An informed public can demand that each of the four cornerstones be attended to.