Recommendations Need Your Review!

At our May 7th meeting, we'll be working on finalizing the great recommendations you've developed over the last 2 months. In preparation, please review this summary of the recommendations and come prepared with your ideas and comments.

Practice Group
1. Quicker identification and placement with relatives and NREFM for children 0-6

a. Better policy, practice for doing front end family finding
Better engagement of parents in identifying relatives and NREFM as potential placements
Utilization of parent partners
Full disclosure to parents about dept.’s obligation to identify family members and discussion of concerns.

b. Develop protocol for NERFM placements

c. Remove barriers to placing children with NREFM
Expedited fingerprinting
Support with completion of packets
Include SF in out of county courtesy NREFM approval
ICPC issues


2. Ongoing training and support for CPS workers on supporting 0-6 children
a. Develop an ER team to do removals including a child focused support person, an ER worker, a mental health back-up support person
Mental health support available as a crisis line and after removals to debrief

b. Offer BAA 3-hr training on removing/transitioning 0-6 children to all ER workers and build in ongoing case consultation/supervisory support

c. Develop a checklist/cheat sheet for child support person on removal and transition for young children.

3. Systemic process for connecting child, caregiver and bio parents to resources: mental health, head start, regional center, etc.
a. Refer every child removed to Early Head Start/Head Start

b. Involve public health nurses in getting all relevant information from children’s doctors after removal. (discuss at next meeting)

c. Improve process for referring to and starting Regional Center services (discuss at next meeting)

d. Create a resource desk within dept. that takes calls from caregivers seeking services and an associated resource manual (like 311). (discuss at next meeting).

4. Improving quality, training and location of foster parents for children 0-6.
a. Special recruiting, training, location for pool of specific 0-6 foster parents who want to make a long-term commitment to a child.

b. Providing 0-6 foster parents with better compensation and support in return for better service (including limits # of children)

c. Developing systemic facilitation of working relationship between foster and bio parents.

d. Culturally appropriate and sensitive services

e. Address transportation issues for children

5. Address lack of services, support for parenting foster youth and their children
a. Create special committee to review practices/policies for parenting foster youth and their children for child appropriateness over the summer.

6. Address quality of services, support for kinship caregivers
a. Create special committee to review practices/policies for kinship caregivers for child appropriateness over the summer.


Team Group

1. Develop parent mentor/partner and kin advocatepositions

2. Develop systemic facilitation of working partnership between foster and bio parents.

a. Create task force to develop a trauma-informed “Age Appropriate Individualized Plan” between the worker and caregivers with basic requirements and expectations of caregivers at time of placement.

b. Develop protocol for implementing icebreakers with parent, caregiver and social worker within 2 days after removal

c. Appropriate visitation for 0-6 children
Involve bio parents in child’s doctor appointments, school events and progress.
Appropriate visitation for 0-6 children supporting nursing mothers when possible.
Address transportation issues for children.

d. Facilitating ongoing relationship between foster parent/child/bio parent to continue after reunification

3. Provide training on 0-6 children’s issues

a. Quarterly trauma informed cross training for parents, caregivers, CPS workers, court, lawyers, CASAs, etc. on 0-6 issues
Reciprocal professional and non-professional cross training on communication
Early intervention services
Interagency training
kin workers specialized training

4. Improve communication between all parties
a. Set up process for social workers to return phone calls

b. Improve relationship between lawyers and caregiver/bio parent