Contents
The S/NB Planning Process
Individualized Service Crafting
Service Satisfaction
Safety and Attachment
Collaboration
Family and Caseworker Satisfaction

From the Fall of 1996 until April 1997, the System of Care Evaluation, a joint project of the Regional Research Institute, in collaboration with the Child Welfare Partnership at Portland State University, was been responsible for developing and piloting an evaluation of strengths/needs based (S/NB) service delivery in the six implementing branches (Deschutes, Polk, and the four Portland Metro Branches) of the State Office for Services to Children and Families (SOSCF). The research team conducted 171 interviews focused on the experiences and viewpoints of caseworkers, family members, foster parents, and community partners involved in a random selection of cases that had been designated for Strengths/Needs Based planning. The interviews covered many aspects of the S/NB practice approach, including:

• achieving agreement in the planning process;
• the use of family decision meetings in identifying strengths and needs;
• ensuring that safety and attachment needs are met;
• individualized service crafting and the use of flexible funds;
• forming collaborative relationships with families, foster parents, and community partners.

 A final report of findings from 53 case studies was submitted to SOSCF in June, 1997, and is now available to the public. Highlights of that report are presented here, with our thanks to the SOSCF caseworkers, supervisors, branch managers, family respondents, foster parents, community partners and others who contributed time, information and ideas to the project.


The S/NB Planning Process
The strengths/needs based approach calls for achieving agreement with family members about needs before the planning of services. While there was no single recipe for how this is accomplished, many caseworkers told us they used family decision meetings to bring case participants together. In more than 80% of the cases in the research sample, one or more family decision meetings were held, and when they were held, workers generally rated them as very helpful in achieving agreement with family members, foster parents, and especially with community partners.

Family members we interviewed had both positive and negative reactions to the meeting process. While some expressed a sense of being "outnumbered" or said they did not feel they had any power in the situation, others felt supported and listened to, or said they appreciated the process because it recognized some of their strengths. Foster parents and community partners generally considered the meetings useful, but expressed concerns in some cases about participants' ability or willingness to follow through on plans that were made. In many cases, however, families (and foster parents also) did not appear to be knowledgeable about the purpose of the meeting or about Strengths/Needs Based planning in general. The research team felt that if caseworkers could find the time for more preparation of participants, the planning process might be enhanced. Whether or not they attended a meeting, only some of the family members we interviewed felt that their opinion counted in the planning process. More than half said their opinion counted "only a little" or "not at all" while their caseworkers' and/or the courts' opinion counted "a lot." Nevertheless, agreement was fairly high with needs identified for the children, with strengths in the families, and with services that were planned. Family respondents who felt their opinion counted were more likely also to say they agreed with case plans.

Overall, nearly three-quarters of the family respondents said they agreed with most or all of the plans that were made in their case. The importance of achieving agreement was underscored by results on the overall satisfaction measure. Families who said their opinion counted in the planning and who agreed with the plans that were made were significantly more likely to feel satisfied and helped by their involvement with the agency.


Individualized Service Crafting
A core component of the Strengths/Needs Based approach involves matching services to the individual needs of children and families, utilizing flexible funds when necessary to craft nontraditional services. The research team looked for evidence that needs had been explicitly identified, that services fit the needs, and that services were built on family strengths. Given workload issues and system constraints, this was a challenging expectation. However, based on the criteria used for the evaluation, about half the cases showed strong or very strong individualization. In these cases, although plans included primarily traditional mixes of services and actions (substance abuse treatment, parenting education, psychological assessment, mental health services, respite care), there was evidence that plans were developed carefully and appropriately for the needs and circumstances of the family. Less apparent was the matching of services to strengths, which was considered to be strong in only about a quarter of the cases. Caseworkers may need clearer definitions and more guidance about how to achieve this objective of the S/NB approach.

Flexible funds from S/NB were not used very often, in part because it was difficult and time consuming to arrange for them and because other sources of flexible dollars were available and caseworkers were asked to use them first. When they were used, however, flexible funds were considered very important to successful outcomes.


Service Satisfaction
Family members and caseworkers were asked to rate the extent to which services or other actions met the needs that had been identified, on a four-point scale from "not at all" to "very well." Average ratings across services were used to examine the level of service satisfaction. Caseworkers in general rated services as effective in meeting the families' needs (in half the cases, workers rated all services to the family as very effective). Ratings from families were not as high, but in about a quarter of cases there was near perfect agreement between worker and family on service satisfaction, combined with high ratings from both. In another 40% of cases, worker and family average ratings were within one point (for example, the difference between "somewhat" and "a little").

Not all of the services or actions that were planned in S/NB cases actually occurred. When services did not occur, family members cited poor follow through on the part of caseworkers and sometimes impossible demands on their time and resources; caseworkers cited poor follow through on the part of parents and sometimes community partners, system barriers such as contracting, or delay in availability of services.


Safety and Attachment
Safety and attachment needs of children are at the heart of Strengths/Needs Based planning, and the research team examined carefully the extent to which workers, family respondents and foster parents considered these needs to be met. The majority of ratings by both caseworkers and family members on safety and attachment needs of children in the sample were high or fairly high, and with good agreement between worker and family. Both sets of respondents considered the needs for safety and attachment to the primary caretaker to be "very well" met more often than the needs for attachment to siblings and significant others in the children's lives. For about 40% of the sample, there was absolute agreement between worker and family respondent that the need for safety and for attachment to the primary caregiver was "very well "met. Foster parents were more inclined to express concerns about whether needs for attachment to primary caregivers were met, but rated these as well met more often than attachments to siblings and significant others.


Collaboration
The relationship that is established between family member and caseworker emerged as the single most important aspect of services from the families' point of view. One of the measures in the evaluation examined S/NB cases in the sample with respect to four dimensions of collaborative practice: a strengths perspective on the part of the worker, personal support and a caring attitude, shared power, and helpfulness. About 40% of cases in the research sample scored very high on this measure, while about half scored quite low. On specific items, ratings varied. Most workers conveyed a positive attitude about children in the home and also a belief that the parent(s) really cared about their children. On the other hand, families did not feel their caseworkers necessarily believed in their capacity to solve their problems, could be relied on, or were easy to talk to. Few felt their workers helped them to discover positive things about themselves, and only half said their worker considered their opinion important in deciding what should happen. Families who said they had sufficient contact with their worker tended to rate the relationship as much more collaborative on average than families who said they needed more contact or those who felt the contact was excessive.

Higher scores on the overall measure of collaboration were strongly linked with greater agreement with case plans and especially with overall satisfaction. In fact, the quality of the personal relationship with the worker was the single strongest predictor of families' satisfaction with their SOSCF involvement.

Family and Caseworker Satisfaction
More than 70% of the families agreed that overall the services they had received from SOSCF were at least somewhat helpful; more than half said they felt their children had been helped by the agency's actions; and more than half said that, all things considered, it was a good thing that SOSCF had gotten involved with their family. However, fewer said they felt fairly treated by the agency or that their family had gotten stronger as a result of the agency's involvement.

Caseworkers in general were satisfied with their work and the services provided to families in the research sample. In nearly 100% of the cases, the worker agreed that the agency had helped the family and that he or she felt good about the casework that was done with the family. Workers also felt that the children's needs were met but were less sure that the families felt fairly treated by the agency or that the needs of the parents were well served. Caseworkers most often noted community partners' involvement, the parents' cooperation and follow through, communication among case participants, family decision meetings and the support of foster parents as critical to successful cases.

For some workers, S/NB service delivery wasn't very different from the work they had done in the past, with the possible exception of documenting strengths and needs in the case record. Others cited more teamwork, more engagement and empowerment of families, and more flexibility in accessing funds and creating service:

This report was prepared in August 1997