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Who's Looking Out for Children?
Building a Strong National Child Welfare System
Fifteen Essential Steps
CWLA aspires to an America where every child is healthy, safe and thriving, and where all children develop to their full potential… where all children are nurtured, getting what they need, as they require… where all children grow into adults who are able to make positive contributions to family, community, and the nation.
Though most Americans embrace this view and act each day to fulfill it with the children they love, more is needed to meet these needs for all children. This statement addresses essential improvements in our system for the protection and care of children who have been abused or neglected.
Goals
- Keep children safe and help them to grow into healthy, productive adults
- Make good use of public funding and resources
Strategy
- Make sure that each child has at least one responsible adult who assures that he or she is safe, well, and loved
- Invest sufficient resources to ensure that appropriate individual services and care are provided to each child in need of protection
- Establish strong internal and external accountability systems for agencies providing services
- Keep entire communities engaged in protecting children
The Steps
- Change the law and funding formulas to ensure that all children who need protection, regardless of income or living arrangements, are equally eligible for federally supported services. Provide a fair share of federal funds to the states for all federally required protections and services.
- Establish national standards of case work practice and system outcomes that provide a guarantee of safety for all children
- Establish national standards for caseload sizes for all child welfare workers
- Implement standards for minimum contact with children in families receiving protective services and children in foster care
- Require thorough individual and assessments of the care, treatment and support service needs of children and their families
- Provide access to mental health and substance treatment and other services identified as needed
- Establish rigorous standards for supervision and quality reviews within state and local child welfare systems
- Establish education and training standards for all people who work directly with children and families
- Provide scholarships, tuition reimbursement and other incentives to attract people to child welfare positions
- Raise the base annual pay of child welfare caseworkers to at least $40,000
- Provide incentives for creation of local community collaborations to provide neighborhood supports to families
- Require formal working agreements among local child protection, law enforcement, mental health and the other principal agencies with responsibility for protecting children
- Provide adequate payment, training and support to attract more foster families and other placement resources
- Provide additional incentives for adoption by fully funding necessary post-adoption services
- Support the real full cost of services provided to children by voluntary community agencies
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