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Moving From Blame to Quality: How To Respond to Failures in Child Protective Services

NCJ Number
216315
Journal
Child Abuse & Neglect Volume: 30 Issue: 9 Dated: September 2006 Pages: 963-968
Author(s)
Peter Lachman; Claudia Bernard
Date Published
September 2006
Length
6 pages
Annotation
After noting that child protective services (CPS) will sometimes fail to protect at-risk children from harm, this paper suggests a pathway for moving from blame to change that improves the quality of CPS.
Abstract
The result of many inquiries into fatal child abuse cases is to foster a blame culture in CPS. Although the findings from child-death inquiries may identify what went wrong in a given case, when the end result is to attach blame, then CPS workers are likely to develop defensive attitudes that do not produce ongoing improvement in CPS. A move from a blame culture requires an attitudinal and an organizational shift in focus to promote the change process required for learning. The quality paradigm in health care and other industries can be adapted to the child protection field. The aim is to develop a service based on continual improvement in specific areas such as safety, access, timeliness, efficiency, equity, and child-centeredness. The "model for improvement" is a quality tool that can be used by CPS workers in their daily work. It involves three stages in the improvement process: setting an aim, defining measures to show whether or not changes have made a difference in procedures and outcomes, and then determining the change required to achieve improvement. This involves the use of continuous, multiple tests of change in all phases of CPS work rather than a single major change of the system at one point in time. This ongoing process for change and improvement requires better support and training for frontline practitioners; a regular review of team to assess their performance; support from successful teams for those that are less successful; and working in collaboration that involves less blame and more reflective learning. 24 references