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Child welfare supervisors play a key role in the recruitment, retention, and professional development of case workers. They are teachers, coaches, mentors, and evaluators responsible for the quality of services children, youth and families receive in our child welfare system. Child welfare supervisors have a powerful influence on families and on OCS’s ability to achieve the safety, permanence, and well-being of children. Strong child welfare supervision supports positive caseworker/client relationships, comprehensive child and family assessment, treatment plans which build on the client’s strengths and meet their needs, and a case flow that results in better outcomes for families. Many staff have identified outstanding supervision as a key factor in their own job satisfaction and sense of accomplishment. Research suggests that strong supervisory support is a major contributing factor in our ability to retain child welfare caseworkers on the job.
In addition to our long standing supervisory, coaching, and mentoring initiative with Marsha Salus, who has been training our supervisors across the state and has initiated an intensive coaching and mentoring component of her technical assistance, OCS is set to collaborate with the Gary Mallon, DSW of the Louisiana Child Welfare Comprehensive Workforce Project (LCWCWP) at LSU to institute a series of monthly child welfare supervisory teleconferences.
The teleconferences will offer a broad overview in supervision and allow all 200 supervisors statewide to participate in an innovative learning environment centered on best practices and clinical case consultation in child welfare supervision. This is part of a multifaceted approach by the agency to enhance and develop learning opportunities for supervisors centered on state of the art child welfare supervision principles and practices.
The teleconferences are scheduled for the second Tuesday of each month beginning in September, 2009 beginning at 2:00 pm and are schedule to last approximately one hour. LCWCWP has arranged for presentations by key national leaders in the field of child welfare supervision. The calls will also consist of presentation of a wide range of child welfare cases by selected regions/districts with didactic discussions of relevant child welfare principles.
The following is the schedule for the monthly child welfare supervisory teleconferences:
09/08/09 - Introduction to the OCS Supervisors Teleconference Series & Child Welfare Supervision - Gary Mallon, DSW
10/13/09 Overview of the Louisiana supervisors training, the coaching & mentoring project, the clinical training & consultation project, & managing the millennial generation
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Guest Marsha Salus
Marsha K. Salus, M.S.W., is a social work consultant. She has worked in the child welfare field for 28 years and has worked extensively in the State of Louisiana conducting training on basic supervision, coaching and mentoring, and soon clinical supervision. She began her career as a CPS caseworker, and then became a CPS supervisor. Ms. salus has developed several national curricula for child welfare workers and supervisors, including a number of preservice and inservice training programs for child welfare workers and supervisors in a variety of States. Ms. Salus also has developed a 12-day core supervisory training program entitled "Mastering the Art of Child Welfare Supervision," which she has delivered throughout the country. In addition, she has provided training on all aspects of family violence to multidisciplinary audiences around the country. Ms. Salus has assisted State and local CPS agencies in program development and evaluation, and she has worked with several States to establish standards of practice for child welfare supervision.
Strengthening Child Welfare Supervision as a Key Practice Change Strategy helps leaders and supervisors understand supervisors’ critical roles as change agents and develop plans to implement these roles.
Unit 1:
Helping Child Welfare Leaders Re-Conceptualize Supervision (PowerPoint)
Unit 2: Preparing to Redesign Child Welfare Supervision (PowerPoint)
Additional Readings:
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11/25/09 -Child Welfare Supervision - Another Perspective - Steve Priester, MSW, NRCOI
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Steven Preister, Associate Director of the NRC for Organizational Improvement. Steve provides T/TA to States and Tribes in the following areas: strategic planning, planning for the Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) in all its stages, stakeholder involvement, community partnerships, interagency collaboration, systems of care, the service array in child welfare, supervision, training systems and workforce development. Previously, he served for five years as the director of training and technical assistance for the National Child Welfare Resource Center for Family-Centered Practice. Former positions include serving as the executive director of the National Association for Family-based Services, the deputy executive director of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, teaching graduate social work at The Catholic University of America, and directing a family service agency, a university family research center, and a family policy and education foundation.
Strengthening Child Welfare Supervision: A Participatory Design Process (PowerPoint)
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12/08/09- Models of Supervision – Crystal Collins Camargo, University of Kentucky
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Crystal Collins-Camargo, MSW Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
University of Louisville Kent School of Social Work Crystal Collins-Camargo teaches in the masters program
at the University of Louisville Kent School of Social
Work, specializing in child welfare, supervision and
policy. Dr. Collins-Camargo is director of the National
Quality Improvement Center on the Privatization of Child
Welfare Services, a knowledge development initiative
that involves multi-site research and demonstration
projects assessing the effectiveness and efficiency
of provision of child welfare services by private organizations,
and the nature of the public/private partnership required
in such an approach. She also directed the Southern
Regional Quality Improvement Center for Child Protection,
which worked in a ten state region to promote knowledge
development through research and demonstration projects
focusing on the impact of clinical supervision on agency
and client outcomes in child welfare as well as forge
public agency/university partnerships. She conducts
research in child welfare and juvenile court systems.
She was formerly program director for Prevent Child
Abuse Kentucky, and worked in the public child protection
system as a worker, supervisor and statewide specialist.
Models Of Child
Welfare Supervision: Using Clinical Casework Supervision
To Promote Outcomes (PowerPoint)
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01/13/10 – Real Life Supervision - In Home Family Based Cases - Monroe and Lake Charles case presentations
02/10/10- Real Life Supervision in Child Protection Cases- Jefferson and Alexandria case presentations
03/10/10- Real Life Supervision in Foster Care Cases - Baton Rouge and Thibodaux case presentations
04/14/10 – Real Life Supervision in Residential Care Cases - New Orleans and Shreveport case presentations
05/12/10 –Real Life Supervision in Adoption Cases - Lafayette and Covington case presentations
06/09/10 – Summary of Learning, Evaluations, Discussion, and Suggestions for Next Year's Series
The conference call bridge information for each call has been made available to every Region and workers will call in at the assigned time. Regional Administrators have been directed to appoint a regional lead for the conference call series. Regional Administrators have been advised to inform Brent Villemarette, Deputy Assistant Secretary, of the selected regional lead. In addition, the regional lead is expected to encourage and facilitate participation by all supervisors in the region as well as to coordinate the case presentations as indicated above. All supervisors are expected to participate in the conference calls. District Managers should make all efforts to encourage and facilitate the participation by all supervisors and should regularly monitor participation compliance by supervisors. Regional Management is also encouraged to participate.
An evaluation component of this intervention will assist OCS in evaluating its effectiveness.
We are confident that these teleconferences will be powerful and meaningful learning experiences for all OCS supervisors as the State strives to provide OCS staff with the most relevant and sound approaches to child welfare supervision while recognizing the critical role that OCS staff play as change agents. Supervisors stand in a pivotal position in the child welfare workforce in terms of recruiting and retaining the best caseworkers, moving agencies to best practice and creating and sustaining positive organizational change. These supervisory teleconferences serve to recognize and honor the critical role that supervisor play in OCS.
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