Background

In response to pressure from the Juvenile Rights Project, a community advocacy group, the Oregon State Offices for Services to Children and Families (SOSCF) instituted a practice reform in 1996 in six pilot branches (Polk, Deschutes, and the four Portland Metro branches, East, Midtown, N/NE, and St. Johns). Named "System of Care," the service includes individualized assessment of children's needs, strengths-based work with families, involvement of community partners, and flexible funding to pay for wrap-around services to meet children's needs. System changes to support this model include:

(1) after hours professional response to reports of child maltreatment;

(2) enhancement of the quality of foster care through a comprehensive review of existing foster homes, further development of neighborhood and relative placement options, and ensuring that services to meet children's needs follow them into the foster home;

(3) a focus on designing new resources via collaborative relationships with community partners;

(4) a review of standards for selection and ongoing training of workers. A IV-E waiver from the federal government will assist in the provision of flexible funds.

All components of the plan are to be evaluated. The evaluation of the delivery of strengths/needs based services is being conducted by the this evaluation, a joint project of the Regional Research Institute (RRI) and Child Welfare Partnership (CWP), both part of the Graduate School of Social Work at Portland State University. Changes in foster care will be evaluated both by the university and SOSCF; SOSCF will collect and report the data pertaining to broad systemic changes.

Evaluation of the Delivery of
Strengths/Needs Based Services

Phase I (1996 - June '97)

At the core of the practice reform is a model for the interaction of worker and family which has been named "strengths/needs based." Key elements of this service delivery model are:

1. centrality of worker-family relationship;

2. focus on the needs of the child, particularly safety and attachment;

3. recognition and development of family strengths in order to meet child's needs.

The agreement on the needs of the child becomes the focus for the family and caseworker's work together. Needs of the child are individualized and services are tailored to meet these needs; often needs beyond safety and attachment are recognized and services are developed to meet them. Flexible funding is available to pay for services to meet needs.

Because of the emphasis on individualized service planning, a case study method was selected for the evaluation. A relatively small stratified random sample of roughly ten case per branch was drawn. For each case selected in the sample, the project interviewed workers, families, and foster families. A selection of community partners was called from two cases from each branch of our sample. The key outcome variable was the extent to which the needs of the child were met. Also assessed were: the focus on the children's needs and the use of a strength-based perspective to engage the families in meeting these needs; the degree of agreement of worker and family on the needs; whether the family thought the services were helpful; whether the worker took satisfaction in the delivery of good service; and whether the community was satisfied with the case progress or outcome.

The first phase of our evaluation was completed in April 1997, and a report was sent to the State Office for Services to Children and Families in June.

Phase II (July '97 - June '99)

The second phase of the evaluation began in October, 1997, and focused on the use of strengths/needs based practice in initial protective service contacts. In subsequent phases, our evaluation envisioned following cases longitudinally, with instruments designed specifically to look at various aspects of the model at different points during the life of the case. From October 1997 until June 1998, we interviewed 101 families and their caseworkers who had cases open 30-60 days. Research questions underlying the interview schedule for this portion of the evaluation were:

• To what extent were protective service workers able to implement strengths/needs based services during the initial assessment and planning period?
  
  
• To what extent did strengths/needs based service planning contribute to engaging families in work to meet the needs of children?
  
  
• · From the families' perspective, what aspects of strengths/needs based services were helpful or not helpful?
  
  
• · From the workers' perspective, how useful is the strengths/needs based approach in protective service work, and what kinds of additional training or support would be helpful to them in their work?
  
  
• What structural or systems issues at different levels in the agency appear to facilitate or impede workers' abilities to implement strengths/needs based services?
  

A report of this phase of the evaluation was sent to the State Office for Services to Children and Families in July 1998.

Phase III (September 1999 - June 2001)

The final stage of the evaluation is a continuation of previous phases, where additional data are being gathered at three points in the life of new cases to SOSCF: 2-3 months after case opening, 6-8 months, and finally at 12 months.

In addition, the evaluation is following an expanded number of rural cases in the final phase, with Hood River, Wasco, and Tillamook Counties joining Deschutes, Polk, and Clackamas branches in our sample.

Evaluation of Changes in the Foster Care System

In 1997, our evaluation also conducted a statewide survey of foster parents to assess the well-being of those families currently providing foster care for SOSCF. A random sample of 1200 foster homes distributed across the state received a mailed survey, approximately one-third of all foster families. The survey measured information on variables such as the number of children in the home, ethnicity of parents and children, information received about children prior to placement, foster parent perception of the "match" of children and family, participation in decision-making about children in their care, participation in visits with the birth family, training and supports needed, and experiences in having their strengths recognized and used by agency workers.

A report on the survey's findings was also prepared in June and sent to the agency.