Enhancing Child Welfare Visits Through Safety Organized Practice Tools

Quality visits are a fundamental component of effective child welfare practice. These visits serve as a critical opportunity to build trust, assess the child's safety and well-being, and foster positive relationships between you and caregivers, children, and youth. Engaging families in meaningful and consistent visits can lead to a better understanding of the family's needs, strengths, and challenges, which in turn informs tailored interventions around safety and case planning. For more information on the characteristics of quality visits and potential topics to assess during visits, see the box, "Quality Visits."

Safety Organized Practice (SOP) tools play a crucial role in empowering you to enhance the quality of your visits with families. Integrating these tools into visits helps facilitate better communication and engagement with families by promoting trust, transparency, and clarity about safety concerns and intervention strategies. They can help you create a more comprehensive understanding of each family's unique circumstances, thereby promoting safer, more supportive environments for children and youth while strengthening family relationships.

To make visits more effective, use your critical thinking to identify a goal or two for the visit. There are a few questions to consider asking yourself before visits:

Once you have identified a goal for the visit and considered these questions, then you can decide which tools may be most useful (NCDHHS, 2023a).

Quality Visits Include:

Assessing the safety and risk of the child/youth
Assessing the child/youth's needs and services
Progress on case goals (child/youth and/or birth parent)
Time alone with the child/youth
Assessing the birth parent or resource parents needs
Assessing the relationship between the child/youth and caregiver (birth or resource parent)

Potential Topics to Assess on Visits:

Safety and supervision
Changes in household
Relationships within the family (birth, foster, kinship)
Cultural and ethnic considerations
Availability and use of support
Relationship with agency/worker
Upcoming events (CFT, court)
Child/youth behaviors and/or parenting skills
Physical/mental health
School
Recreational activities
Family Time (visits)
Placement change/crisis

"Caseworkers should ask these questions on every home visit and every time we meet with a caretaker, child, or collateral" (NCDHHS, 2025). For example, during a visit with a youth in care, if you asked the three questions, they might share the following:

"I am worried about feeling safe when I go back home. When my parents use drugs, sometimes they pass out, and I can't wake them up. I worry about my schoolwork, because I find it hard to concentrate when I know they are using, and I'm worried they are going to die. I am also concerned about my friends and whether I will be able to see them regularly now that I am in my foster home."

"Things are going well with my foster parents. They listen to me and try to help me feel comfortable. My school has been supportive, and I have one teacher who checks in on me. I continue to enjoy drawing and playing soccer, which helps me relax and allows me to see a few friends."

"I need more support to feel safe at home—for instance, someone to talk to about how I'm feeling. I'd like to see my parents more, but only if I know they are not using. I would like the school to understand that sometimes I have a hard time concentrating and could use more help with my homework."

Sometimes, youth don't feel comfortable talking to workers, so this framework can be a helpful way for them to share their worries, strengths, and needs.

Solution-focused questions can be helpful to use within the three-column mapping questions or as you are engaging with families on initial or follow-up visits. For example, on an initial visit with a biological mother who left marks and bruises on her child, an exception question to ask might be, "Tell me about a time when your child wasn't minding you, and you didn't leave marks and bruises." This provides important information about whether the mother has other effective discipline methods.

Similarly, if you asked a scaling question on an initial visit with her child about how safe he felt living with his mother, with a 1 being completely unsafe and a 10 being completely safe, and he shared he was at a 3, it would be important to ask this same question at each follow-up visit. The goal would be for his number to go up each time to indicate he is feeling safer. If that number were to go down, exploring with him what led to that number would be critical information to gather to assess and ensure safety.

Scaling willingness, capacity, and confidence with resource parents or kinship caregivers can be a useful tool for gathering more detailed information regarding topics such as how they feel about managing a child or youth's behavior.

For example, "on a scale of 1 to 10 with a 1 being completely unwilling and a 10 being completely willing, how willing are you to work with the child's behavior?"

"On a scale of 1 to 10, with a 1 being completely incapable and a 10 being completely capable, how capable do you feel managing the child's behavior?"

"On a scale of 1 to 10, with a 1 being not confident at all and a 10 being completely confident, how confident are you that the child's behavior is going to improve with the technique we discussed today?" (NCDHHS, 2023b).

The answers to these questions provide important information about managing a child or youth's behavior and whether the caregiver needs more support or strategies to help manage those behaviors.

The three houses tool can serve as a valuable visual and emotional aid to understand a child's perspective and concerns. For example, if you were on a visit with a five-year-old who witnessed domestic violence, the child may respond in the following way:

"My house of worries is full of dark clouds and scary shadows. I worry that someone will get hurt again or that the fighting will never stop. Sometimes, I worry that I am bad or that I did something wrong. The worries make me feel sad and scared inside."

"My house of good things has my favorite teddy bear, my blanket, and my family pictures. I like it when my mom and dad smile at me and when I get hugs. Sometimes, I remember happy times when we played together or read stories. These good things make me feel warm and safe, even if I am worried."

"In my house of hopes and dreams, I wish that everyone is happy and that the fighting stops. I hope I can have a big hug from my family and that we can all be friends again. I want to feel safe and loved every day."

These responses illustrate how a young child might process complex emotions. It is important for caregivers and workers to listen carefully and provide support that helps the child feel secure and understood.

Safety-organized practice tools serve as essential resources. They allow child welfare workers to respond promptly to safety concerns, build stronger relationships with families through transparent communication, and make informed decisions. They help workers to conduct more effective, focused, and meaningful visits that ensure the caregiver and child/youth's voices are a part of planning, leading to better outcomes for children and families. As one parent shared regarding how SOP fosters engagement, "I learned how to build a connection, build a relationship, and build that communication to where it's productive and positive and putting the children's needs first" (UC Davis).