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Child Welfare Safety Reform Initiative

Protecting children in Oregon

Oregon's Child Welfare Division is committed to the safety of every child in foster care and those who come to our attention through the Oregon Child Abuse Hotline. Through our safety reform initiative, we're working to improve how we protect the safety of these children. 

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Strategy areas and activities

Together with Child Welfare leadership and national child safety experts, the Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS) is working on short, mid and long-term activities across multiple strategy areas. A summary of this work is outlined below. We will update this page as we make progress or identify new efforts. 

* Indicates work already in progress or completed.

Analyze Oregon Administrative Rules (OAR)

  • Partner with the Office of Developmental Disabilities Services (ODDS) to analyze OARs related to assessing the safety of youth with differing physical, developmental and behavioral health needs. Look for ways to enhance casework practice. 
  • Based on this analysis we will make recommendations to strengthen practice and ​update OARs and procedures.

Training on child abuse reporting

  • Released new interactive mandatory reporter training. This training is for both mandatory and voluntary reporters. It helps people recognize the signs of abuse, and when and how to make a report.​​*
  • Develop a companion "mandatory supporter" training. This training will be for the general public and will explain ​how people can help create safer communities around ​children.

Advanced training on safety assessments for specific populations

  • Partner with ODDS and the Oregon Health Authority to develop an advanced training series for assessing the safety of youth with differing physical, developmental and behavioral health needs.

Improve transparency

  • Create a tracking system for Child Welfare safety reforms that is available to the public.
  • Make it easier for people to find and understand child fatality data, trends and recom​mended process improvements that come from our Critical Incident Review Team (CIRT) reports. You can find CIRT reports and more information here​.*

Maximize staff time to engage w​ith families​

  • ​Direct local offices to develop strategies that help staff spend more time engaging with families to support comprehensive Child Protective Services (CPS) assessments.*

Create formal process for reviewing CIRT recommendations

  • ​Create​ ​a mandatory response process for Critical Incident Review Team (CIRT) recommendations. Central office and local leadership teams will ​document their shared assessment and responses to recommendations.

Review key practice areas

  • Conduct comprehensive fidelity reviews of key child safety practice areas, such as 90-day staffings, group supervision, face-to-face visits, updated safety plans, etc.

Improve efficiency for case work

  • Evaluate essential functions and processes for case work staff. E​xplore opportunities for increased efficiencies without compromising child safety.​​​

Sexual exploitation and trafficking​​

  • Require a two-day, intensive training for​ all local and central office managers on working with children at risk of sexual exploitation and trafficking (scheduled for June 2025).

 Substance ​use

  • Use Safe Systems Mapping to explore youth substance use, focusing on the barriers that keep youth from accessing overdose prevention services, specifically fentanyl.*​

Starting in April 2025

We will work with an external contractor, Human Services Group​, to complete a review over the next 90-120 days. 

  • The review will include agency leadership, s​taff, partners and other experienced child welfare practitioners and national leaders. 
  • The review will evaluate current safety practices and make recommendations​. 
  • The review will look at: 
    • Safety, including enhancing practices and procedures
    • Incident responses
    • Case management practices
    • ​System and operational-level factors that may help improve timely and comprehensive safety decisions​​

​ODHS is actively working with the neutral expert hired as part of the Wyatt v. Kotek settlement​.

This work is focused on:

  • Reducing the number of children and young adults who are harmed after they enter foster care. Improving communication with state courts, attorneys, c​hildren and young adults, and their families when harms do occur.
  • Making sure children and young adults get medical and mental health assessments, and timely referrals for medical and mental health care.
  • Improving the quality of foster care homes and services for children and young adults.
  • Lowering the number of children and young adults who come back into foster care.
  • Improving how quickly children and young adults get case plans after entering care. Case plans outline the expectations for the child's parents and other family members, services and referrals Child Welfare will provide, routine contact with the child's parents, preparation of reports to the court and other service providers, and timelines for each part of the plan.

The neutral expert's initial review will be done ​by July 29, 2025.

Expected outcomes

  • Fewer child abuse reports while children are in foster care
  • Increased timeliness of complete, quality and sufficient child protective services assessments
  • Increased staff skill, confidence and competence in building safety practices
  • Increased transparency on ways ODHS is tracking progress on trends