Purpose of the Guidance

What is the Guidance?

The guidance includes information about and instructions for action in fourteen critical areas for which the field of public child welfare has responsibility. The guidance is based on the premise that all fourteen critical areas are essential and interrelated; that capacity in each area must be built; and positive change and innovation will occur when alignment among all areas is present. The analytical framework below is a visual depiction of this premise.

Analytical Framework: Click here for larger version

Within each section of the guidance you will find the definition of the critical area, an explanation of why it is important to the field, questions that will be answered within the guidance and a systematic explanation of what that specific guidance entails.

The guidance format addresses four levels of work and is structured in the following order:

Strategy
The guidance first lays out the strategy work of a particular critical area and is a statement of why the agency exists and how it can be expected to conduct its business. Strategy guides all key agency decisions, clarifies the work of the agency and explains how it will achieve positive outcomes.

Key Processes
The guidance then lays out the key processes of an agency. Key Processes are the systematized processes needed to execute the strategy.

Operations

The guidance clarifies how to operationalize the strategy and key processes of the agency through the daily activities of the agency.

Implementation

The guidance finally addresses the resources and/or capacities required to implement and monitor the guidance and continuously improve within the agency.

It is important to understand that the guidance is based on the assumption that states and localities are in different stages of development and that the context in which public child welfare work is done is unique and complex. Within the field of public child welfare, variability occurs in the governance and structure of public child welfare agencies, in the number of children served, in the types of services provided to meet the needs of these children and in the resources available to support the system. In addition to these areas of variability, there are differing levels of implementation of best practice based on current research, as well as differing levels of staff performance. Each state or locality, in considering the context, must determine the best approach to closing the gaps in its development, performance and capacity.

Who is the Guidance For?

The guidance has been developed so that a variety of constituencies can use it. First and foremost, public child welfare agencies will use it as a benchmark against which to measure itself and then as a tool to understand how to demonstrate continuous improvement and innovation. Private agencies that provide services to children through contracts or licensing with the public agency can use it as a benchmark as well or to learn what they can expect from the public agencies with which they do business. Family or juvenile courts, academia, researchers and other stakeholders can use it to gain an understanding of how public agencies can be expected to operate and perform.