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Vol. 27, No. 2
July 2024
Assessing Safety Beyond CPS Assessments
Effectively assessing child safety during a CPS assessment is a priority in child welfare. This is why strengthening all child welfare staff's ability to assess ongoing safety throughout the child and family's engagement with child welfare services is the first goal in our state's 2025-2029 Child and Family Services Plan (CFSP).
The CFSP includes partnering with Evident Change to utilize evidenced-based research in the revision of the Structured Decision Making (SDM) tools. Beginning with intake and moving through permanency planning, these tools support the ongoing assessment of safety. Revised tools will provide policy and guidance on completing the tools and explaining them to those we work with. They are designed to increase accuracy and consistency in practice across the state as well as increase opportunities for engaging stakeholders in safety planning.
The new tools were developed in partnership with all stakeholders in the child welfare system. According to Amanda Hubbard, NC Division of Social Services (NC DSS) Safety Policy Consultant, and Jessica Frisina, NC DSS Permanency Planning Consultant, feedback was obtained throughout the revision process from child welfare staff, community and family partners, professionals in other areas that intersect with our work, and subject matter experts.
Ensuring child safety and mediating risk is an expectation throughout a family's involvement with child welfare. North Carolina's Practice Standards define assessment as "gathering and synthesizing information from children, families, support systems, agency records, and persons with knowledge to determine the need for ongoing child protective services and to inform planning for safety, permanency, and well-being." Assessment includes learning from families about their strengths and preferences and establishing rapport. We engage families, their safety networks, and collaterals to support safety planning. Safety planning happens most effectively with engaged family and clear, consistent communication.
Skills that are important for child welfare staff to use include rapport building (engagement), active listening, clear communication, empathy, knowledge of policy, critical thinking, and solution-focused, family-centered thinking. Strong and effective rapport building upfront ensures better engagement with families throughout the life of the case. Ongoing assessment should always include assessing the impact of a caretaker's behavior on their child. If a parent's behavior does not have a significant impact on the child, it likely will not be identified as a danger indicator on the revised SDM safety assessment tool and there will be no need for a safety plan.
Impact is the harm caused to children because of their caretakers' behaviors. According to Hubbard and Frisina, impact occurs "when a parent's behavior, attitudes, emotions, intent, or circumstances create conditions that fall beyond mere risk of maltreatment and have become an actual imminent threat to a child's safety." Hubbard and Frisina report that the revised SDM tools will help child welfare staff create the behavior-based harm and worry statements used in Safety Organized Practice.
According to the Northern California Training Academy, harm statements and danger statements are "brief, behaviorally-based statements that help families, network members, service providers and staff become very clear about why child welfare is involved with the family and what we are worried may happen in the future" (Cook, 2024).
Regarding harm and danger statements in North Carolina, Hubbard and Frisina say as much as possible, we try to use the family's own language for these statements. The goal is to write statements using honest, detailed, non-judgmental, and factual language. See the article "Concepts and Terms to Enhance Assessments of Safety and Risk" in Practice Notes vol. 24, no. 2 for more on harm and danger statements.
Completing a thorough assessment may require referrals for and consulting with individuals who have specialized knowledge, certifications, licensure, or training. Mental health and substance use assessments, parenting capacity evaluations, and medication management checks are examples. There is an expectation that through in-home and permanency planning services, child welfare staff will collaborate with other professionals, the family, and the family's collaterals while continuing to assess safety and facilitate behavior changes.
Hubbard and Frisina emphasize that while CPS in-home and permanency planning services are implemented to reduce safety and risk, services do not equal safety.
For more information on the SDM tools and SOP implementation refer to Evident Change's "North Carolina SDM Field and Consistency Testing Instructional Webinar: Assessment and In-Home Services."