Director's Message

A national review

This week, the National Resource Center for Child Protective Services (NRCCPS) released a report that reviewed Oregon's child safety intervention practices and operations and made recommendations for overall improvements to Oregon's child welfare system.

The report's findings weren't unexpected

While the national reviewers indicated that Oregon's child welfare system has a strong foundation, they also identified critical areas that need immediate attention and made a number of recommendations to improve upon what the department has built to make it more accountable.

The report recommended, among other findings, that the state:

• develop standardized practices emphasizing child safety throughout all stages of a child welfare case;
• improve training for child welfare workers by developing a procedures manual with clear instructions;
• remove legal representation duties from child welfare staff;
• and address staff workload issues.

Next steps

I have appointed Ramona Foley, the assistant director for Children, Adults, and Families, to lead the implementation of the recommendations identified in the report and to explore how to expand involvement in strengthening child welfare services across the entire system, involving our partner agencies and the courts.

While we will begin work immediately to address the issues raised by this report, many of these findings go beyond what the department alone can resolve. The report was presented this week before the House Health and Human Services Subcommittee on Child Welfare. Legislators will now begin looking at how to implement these recommendations, given the limited resources that exist.

The Governor remains committed to keeping the health and safety of Oregon's children as one of his top priorities and indicated that to achieve this goal we must continue to ensure that our child welfare system has the policies and practices in place to protect the children in our care. The Governor called for the independent review in December 2004 following two high-profile cases in the Portland area that initiated Critical Incident Response Teams (CIRT) within eight days of each other.

The report also lists the challenges facing Oregon's child welfare system -- and these also are very familiar to all of us here in the department who work with these issues. Challenges for this state include the impact of methamphetamine, workload demands, local influence and determination, staff configurations; worker authority to remove children, group decision making processes, legal custody and in-home supervision, threat of harm, and strengths and needs-based interventions.

We will continue to move forward, working in partnership with many, toward making needed changes to the system, following the direction provided from the Governor and Legislators on these critical issues.

Integration, partnerships, and results

Ten years ago, when I first came to head up DHS, we worked together to re-focus the department around three key concepts -- integration of services, building community partnerships, and measuring results.

Now a decade later, we can look back and see the significant strides that we have made in these areas.

• The department has moved from stand-alone divisions to a unified agency, eliminating much redundancy and inefficiency.
• Strong community partnerships are being built across the state. Some of those -- like work done in Jackson County and continuing in East Multnomah County -- are being copied nationwide.
• The department continues to refine how it collects and measures results.

Not only do these efforts make sense in terms of better utilizing our limited resources, but our clients and the public at large are also being better served by a department that now works more closely together, continues to actively engage stakeholders and partners, and holds itself accountable for results. That is why this work has continued to be a focus, in spite of the changes the agency has experienced over the years.

As DHS transitions to new leadership over the next few months, you can be assured that the work that you have done in these areas will not be lost or forgotten. Your efforts make a difference in people's lives every day and those efforts will continue to move the department to a new level of service and accountability.

Food for thought

"You can either take action, or you can hang back and hope for a miracle."

--Peter F. Drucker

This message is intended for all department employees. Please read it electronically, if possible. Managers and supervisors are asked to share the message each week with employees who do not have email access.

If you have a disability and need this message to be provided to you in another format, please send an email to dhs.forms@state.or.us, or call (503) 947-5107. You can also fax your request to (503) 373-7690, or call (503) 947-5080 for TTY service. If you know of others who need this accommodation, please let them know it is available.