Minutes from the CRP Conference
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Jackson TN
Persons Present:
Northwest CRP:
Dana Cobb, C-Chair, NW Area Manager, TCCY
Shannon Mayo, Resource Coordinator, DCS
Chanesia Dixon, NW Head Start Program
Ann Minton, Child Care Program, Department of Human Services
Marilyn Goodman, Co-Chair, Social Worker, Milan Special School District
Phyllis Webb, Team Coordinator, DCS
Joetta Yarbro, Dyer City Schools
Shelby County CRP
Nancy Williams, Memphis Child Advocacy Center
Jeanette Boyd, Team Coordinator, DCS
Randy Schnell, Memphis City Schools
Sandra Allen, Chair, Le Bonheur Center for Children and Parents
Marvin Chaney, Assistant Regional Administrator, DCS, Shelby County
Montgomery County CRP
Judy Covington, Co-Chair, Montgomery County Child Advocacy Center
Debra Bucy, Guidance Counselor, Clarksville Montgomery County Schools
Sandra Smith-Williams, Montgomery County Jenivle Court
Maria Carrier, Co-Chair
Amelia B. Wallace
Mayme Stephenson
Marjahna Hart, DCS, Central Office
Susan Steppe, Le Bonheur Center for Children and Parents
Rory Alley, UT-SWORPS
The CRP members from across the state met on this date at the Madison County Agricultural Center to review the work of the previous year, develop recommendations for Commissioner Miller, and develop new action steps for the following year.
Susan Steppe gave a presentation to review the basic “charge” of the CRP as stated in the CAPTA legislative updates that created Citizens Review Panels.
Review of the Previous Year’s Efforts
When this group last met in April 2006, they considered the role of CRP’s and ways to explore issues in the child welfare system in order to develop recommendations. At that time there was a group consensus to pursue the issue of follow-up and prevention services, both across the State, and specifically in the communities served by the three CRP’s. The National Resource Center on Child Protective Services Consultant, Pam Bond, presented the group a variety of options to explore the issue. In short, in order to make recommendations on the issue of services to families, the CRP members had to find some way to learn about the current “state of the community” with regard to this issue. This begs questions such as:
· What are the most common presenting issues/needs of families in our community?
· What are the characteristics of families referred to CPS for intervention?
· What about families inappropriately referred to CPS? What are the needs of those families and how can we meet those needs?
· What types of community services are available?
· Are they effective? Are they relevant to the needs of the clients?
· What are our options in developing services that are relevant and effective?
In order to address these issues, the CRP’s needed information about client families and local service delivery systems. In the quest for that information all three CRP’s began with the idea of reviewing DCS files. Certainly, the federal legislation gives them the right to do so, and it was proposed that this strategy would be the best way to get a handle on the “state of the community” with regard to services and needs.
CRP chairs first discussed this idea with Commissioner Miller in August 2006 and she suggested that the committees might want to participate in the DCS Quality Services Review process and directed the chairs to talk with Daryl Chansuthus who heads up this effort. After a conference call with Ms. Chansuthus, chairs realized that the Departmental QSR effort was quite intense, likely beyond the scope of CRP member’s available time, and was not quite on the mark in terms of CRP concerns.
The next step was for each CRP group or the chair(s) to discuss this issue with the local Regional Administrators. In fall 2006 chairs and Susan Steppe had individual conferences with Kitty Oliver, Frank Mix, and Antionette Holman on this issue. The question: How can we gather information about local service delivery? Should we read records? Ultimately, it became clear that reading DCS files was not the best way to meet the information needs of CRP’s for the following reasons:
· In order to get a broad view of the situation the CRP’s would need to randomly pull a large enough sample to all them to draw general conclusions on their findings. Reading a large sample meant developing and instrument and achieving inter-rater reliability, a time consuming task.
· CRP members are unaccustomed to looking at DCS files and there would have likely been a steep learning curve to become familiar with formats and to find information.
· DCS staff persons are frequently in the position to have their files pulled and read by a variety of people. There was concern that this act, in and of itself, would create an adversarial tone.
In summary, there wasn’t enough time, we couldn’t rely on our “findings”, and we were bound to make enemies with a case file reading process.
After reaching this point of understanding, each CRP began to deal with the task for learning more about service delivery in a different way.
Note on: Multiple Response System – A continuing theme in all CRP discussions on this area was each region’s implementation of the Multiple Response System. The CRP’s interests in service delivery certainly overlap with the prospect in MRS implementation in every region. The MRS legislation requires each county to have a Community Advisory Board (CAB) to support the local implementation. One of the issues that posed something of a challenge is and was how the role of the CAB is different or similar to the role of the Citizens Review Panel. Could one group or body meet both of these roles? Clearly, gathering, maintaining, and nurturing one community group was a significant task. Maintaining two groups with similar functions and many of the same people just does not make any sense to DCS or community members. In response to this NW decided that CRP, being representative of all nine counties, could not serve as the CAB for any one county. In that instance, CRP is clearly a different function. Shelby County and Clarksville have not fully resolved this question. The upcoming Knox County CRP may very well attempt to combine these two functions.
Montgomery County CRP planned a focus group with local DCS staff cancelled that meeting, opting for a focus group with local school guidance counselors.
Shelby County experienced a change in local DCS leadership and did not pursue this issue further until March 2007. At that time the CRP reviewed some Shelby County DCS data that had been provided by the DCS Public Information staff in fall 2006.
Northwest CRP did hold two focus groups for all Child Protective Services Workers and Supervisors on October 30, 2006. This meeting was couched in terms of a CPS Appreciation Breakfast and was a celebration of CPS efforts. CRP chairs led the case manager focus group, asking questions about clients and service delivery systems. Susan Steppe met with the supervisors and had a similar discussion. Comments and “findings” of the groups are provided as hand-outs to Conference participants.
So, as CRP members gathered in Jackson on April 12, 2007 it was with this previous background for the preceding year. It would be inaccurate to state that CRP members had gained a tremendous amount of information and understanding about service delivery systems in the past year. However, perhaps the greatest lessons were about the complexity of these systems and how very difficult it is to gain an accurate understanding of the “state of the community” with regard to this issue.
Presentation of the Northwest Co-Chairs
Marilyn Goodman presented information from the focus groups conducted in Dresden last fall.
Insert Documents
Key points
Actions and Recommendations
Each CRP met to discuss their next steps and recommendations with the following products:
Montgomery County Plans to:
· Conduct a focus group with Family Support Staff and CPS supervisors. They would like to pose these questions: What resources would make your job better? What services are available for families? What could help meet the clients’ needs?
· Obtain data on the CPS and FSS programs of Montgomery County. They want to know things like:
o How many of referrals are reported, by referral type
o How many referrals by referral source
o How many referrals, by referral source, by classification
o How many families are referred for FSS?
o How many of those families are accepted by FSS?
o What types of services to FSS clients get?
o What are outcomes for FSS clients? Do the remain at home, have subsequent referrals, get removed anyway?
Northwest CRP
· Will conduct the focus groups every year as an annual event
· Would like to access and review data similar to that described above in the Montgomery County comments
· Suggest DCS designate a training resource person for each county.
· Would like to further evaluate the mobile crisis support efforts for mental health crises. This was a major issue in the focus group.
Shelby County
The Shelby County group agreed with others that the ability to review and analyze local data was an important first step for them. This step could perhaps lead to more inquiry and other efforts including focus groups. They felt that the data analyze could help to shape their inquiry.
Large Group Comments
1) We need to know if teachers are making reports that are largely screened out or if investigated, unfounded. This could help in perhaps informing teachers about reporting or possibly identify community needs that teachers recognize but may not be appropriate for the child welfare system response.
2) DCS needs to do adequate preparation for implementation of MRS. This varies a lot from region to region. Community partners in some areas are getting mixed messages about dates and activities. DCS should give partners specific information on the roll-out plan. Partners feel like they know “too little, too late” and they want to be part of the planning.
3) Partners recognize that there is a proper time to bring them into the process but feel like the community is largely uninformed or not timely informed of major DCS initiatives.
4) CRP’s believe that if they are adequately informed in a timely way, they will make every effort to support and facilitate DCS initiatives.
RECOMMENDATIONS
All group members agreed upon the following recommendations to be forwarded to Commissioner Miller.
Item 1:
Concern: Community Partners are often uninformed or poorly informed about the many DCS initiatives. This creates confusion and reduces efforts for them to understand and support DCS efforts.
Recommendation: Publish a monthly or quarterly an electronic newsletter specifically targeted for providers and partners OUTSIDE of DCS. The purpose of this communication is to bridge the gap in information and encourage support of these efforts.
Item 2:
Concern: CRP’s need access to DCS data that helps to describe the current service delivery system. CRP’s need help to access relevant reports.
Recommendation: Please designate a person who can help CRP’s identify critical data elements and obtain reports for review and analysis.
Closing
These recommendations will be written into the annual report and sent to Commissioner Miller. CRP’s set dates for future meetings:
Northwest – August 22, time and location to be determined
Shelby County – June 12 at 8:30 AM, location to be determined
Clarksville – June 14, 2:30, location to be determined