Team Decisionmaking
Child welfare agencies need to improve the quality and consistency of their placement decisions. Typically, the least experienced staff make the decision to remove a child from its family in relative isolation without support from more experienced staff and without the input of the family, extended family, and community. Team decisionmaking ensures that the family, community, and more experienced child welfare staff participate in and support the decisionmaking process.
What is "team decisionmaking"?
Team decisionmaking takes place in a meet-ing that includes family members, foster parents (if the child is in placement), service providers, other community representatives, the caseworker of record, the supervisor, and, often, resource staff from the child welfare agency. The meeting is a sharing of all information about the family that relates to the protection of the children and functioning of the family. The goal is to reach consensus about a plan that protects the children and preserves or reunifies the family.
How was this tool applied in Family to Family?
Team decisionmaking was applied by identifying and training a group of facilitators who chair the team decisionmaking meetings and by restructuring child welfare placement decisionmaking policies and practices.
What did we learn from these applications?
By implementing team decisionmaking, we learned how:
- To improve the child welfare decisionmaking process.
- To improve safety outcomes for children.
- To increase cooperation among families, foster families, providers of services, the community, and caseworkers.
- To decrease the length of time children stay in foster care.
- To improve child welfare's relationship with the broader community.